National Birds of Prey Centre
NEWSLETTER Photos Duncan Jennings / JPJ/ Linda Wright
April 2004, Number 19 Directors Note The new Year started with a major clean and tidy up by all staff at the Centre. Normally we start this in November, but because of the changes in plan we had just over three weeks prior to opening, rather than the usual two and a bit months. We made it, the place looked and still does look great. We removed some cypress trees close to barn three, this has given both the enclosures in the barn and the flower bed far more light. However unknowingly we removed the roost of a wild tawny owl, he, and we do know he is a he, because he has been flirting very loudly to Mugwort, our female imprinted Tawny Owl, has moved to the cypress trees by the workshop—a move of about 90 feet, but has been very noisy in his complaints! We re did all the signs on the aviaries, this is always a dilemma, do you have expensive signs that will last several years and in fact always last less long than promised, or do you have more temporary signs that are easily replaceable. We went for the second option, not least because many of the birds are leaving with us at the end of the year and so the signs would not be needed here in the future. February saw us re open, and actually we had a very good half term, which was pleasing, however the rest of February and the early part of March was absolutely freezing and with an easterly wind, sitting in the field to watch the flying was nothing short of torture, I was impressed that anyone would do it! The cold weather slowed up the start of the breeding season as well, and many birds that would have laid are late this year. All the daffodils were out by the latter half of March, having survived freezing cold, four inches of snow on one day and blustery winds, plus I am afraid that my dogs have a habit of running through them at full tilt seeing how many they can
behead in one run! We are now all praying for a good Easter, both weather and visitor wise as it is the time of year that heralds the end of winter and the dread of an over draught in the bank. I have had one trip to the US in January, to see the prototype for the new aviaries, which are cracking. At least the delay in the move has meant that we can have a little more time on the enclosure construction which is a much better way of doing things. This was followed by a trip to India for a Conference on the Vulture Crisis over there, I will write about this on the Trust page. It was then home again to see about the sale and the training of birds for the summer season. The house and Centre sale has been somewhat of a saga, and I still do not have a confirmed buyer, although I have two offers. So finally, because I am going to be away a lot in the next six weeks, I have put it in the hands of Humberts, who in comparison to Knight Frank, are very impressive. We are doing our utmost to sell it as a going concern so that it remains as a visitor attraction for all to enjoy. It will be interesting to see how things go. I hope to see you all at some point during the year, bring lots of paying visitors with you and a Happy Easter to all. jpj
Staff Changes.
One of the many knock on effects of having to delay the move has been that we have lost some staff, Charlotte Hill and Emmeline had always intended to leave anyway, however Faye Giddy and Mark Parker were a little more of a shock. Mark has been with us for ten years, and had become a very integral part of the bird team, with particular emphasis on the various courses that we run here. He had made the Police Wildlife Liaison Officers Course a great success with his own background of the police. And the one day, three day and five day courses have much to thank Mark for both in content and their undoubted success. He will be sadly missed, however he now has three children by his second marriage and this sort of work does not pay well, nor does it give enough time for children, so Mark is now working with his father-in-law and has enough time to be a proper father. Kirsty will be pleased!! Faye had been with us for two years, starting as a volunteer and then joining full time, we also had the benefit of Lily, her daughter and Tim her husband who frequently joined us and helped. They are in the throws of emigrating to New Zealand, taking their lives with them and have much to do before going. We hope to see them on the occasional weekend here. Losing four people meant that we had to have some replacements and I am very glad to say that Alasdair has re joined us and is running the courses and appears to be enjoying himself greatly. We have been getting very good comments back from the
guests, and he has come back with all the birds, all but once, and that was just a late return!! Also helping out are Sarah from the US until mid May, Tom who is from Australia and says he now fits in because we are all insane and he is getting that way. He spent a peaceful hour the other day making a small box for the chalk, because it annoyed him that we only had one…………! Coming on May 1st is Sharron whom everyone is looking forward to as she has been a wonderful volunteer.
The Shop. Last year, I have to admit that the shop looked sad, we never had enough stock and it was very sparsely filled. So we decided that as we had to do another year we would push out the boat and not only make the whole place look even better for its last season under my care, but that the shop would improve. To that effect we have got some good stockists and there are some very nice things now available in the shop this year, its already pretty stocked up in time for Easter. And my apologies for its lack of imagination and content last season. We will also have some T shirts and polo shirts with the National Birds of Prey Centre logo, so you can, if you wish, buy one with this name as a memento of my own personal final year. Remembering of course that we hope for the Centre to continue on into the future. So come and spend your money—we need to sell the stock!
NEW BIRDS THIS SEASON As always at this time of year we train or re-train birds to work through the busy part of the season. Some are birds that have rested, moulted and come back on duty, some are new birds to the team. Some turn out well, others average and the occasional one turns out not to be suitable for demonstration work. This year Ona, the Bald Eagle is now getting close to adult plumage and has just come out and is flying free again, it is nice to see her in the air. She is one of the birds not coming with me as it is almost impossible to get Bald Eagles into the US, plus Jim Elliot has several birds there already. So she will remain here and is starting to fly well again. Last year London Zoo very kindly gave us a Gymnogene or African Harrier Hawk as it is also known. This bird was taken over by Annie and it was a long time in the training, it is a difficult and nervous bird and we found that we could not tether it as it kept getting tangled, no matter what system we used, so he now lives free lofted in an enclosure. To say that Annie is pleased would be the understatement of the year. Although Rust as the bird is now named, is not in the best of feather condition as he was a little frayed on arrival, he flies absolutely superbly. These birds probably have one of the lightest wing loadings of any raptor, with only possibly one of the Harriers which are closely related having a lighter one. This means for a light body weight it has huge wings and so is very light in the air, each wing beat takes it floating upwards, and it is able to fly incredibly slowly without falling out of the air. So to watch Rust fly is a joy, particularly if there is any wind. I hope he continues to improve, we are going to fly him for several more months until he starts to moult. Well worth a photo though.
Sole, the Albino kestrel is back on duty and again for photographs she is wonderful, on a sunny day with sunlight shining through her white feathers she literally glows. I only wish we could publish this newsletter in colour as some of the photos I put in lose a great deal being only black and white. However if you have a camera, the chances of good photos here are high, particularly if you visit often and start to know where the birds are likely to be. Two of the Red Kites are starting up and flying loose now and they will be joined by one of the Yellow billed Kites, they too are good to photograph. This picture is by a new member - Linda, who has been very helpful with helping me on a new digital camera choice and hopefully with lessons too! So perhaps I will improve photographically this summer too! I can’t encourage those of you with digital cameras too much to try for flight shots, even with a point and shoot you can get good shots, and with a digital SLR the world is your oyster. It is rewarding to get good shots of the birds, and you have plenty of good opportunities here, with both flying and static birds.
As you may remember the Trust has been funding the vulture project in India, we are partners with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) the Bombay Natural History Society and the RSPB. In February this year there was a large workshop held in Northern India close to the Vulture Captive Care Centre, north of Chandagar. I attended this meeting, where all those concerned came together. There were representatives from Nepal, Cambodia, India, the US and the UK. As it is now known that the Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory drug Diclofenac appears to be the cause of the vulture declines, the task of the workshop was to look at all other possible factors and then put together a draft MOU that everyone could sign up to. For three days the participants worked on what they knew about potential threats to vultures throughout their range and put the resulting information in a priority listing. The upshot of this was that the problem needs to be tackled on a number of fronts. Research must still continue to look at all factors, including the potential Viruses found in vulture carcasses by Dr Cunningham. The use of Diclofenac must be controlled and better still banned. As many vultures as possible and as can be housed need to be caught up and kept in captivity to keep them from eating affected carcasses and further birds dying. It was agreed that there is a very high possibility of all three species of the South Asian Gyps vultures going extinct in the next few years. The recovery plan is to get sustainable colonies of all three species back to the wild and breeding by 2030. There are 27 birds in captivity right now. The aim is to get 25 pairs of each of the three species in a number of different captive centres in the next two years. The time is short, there is none to be lost, although we have probably lost this breeding season already. It is easiest to collect young birds from the nest and these are mostly going to die anyway. However the breeding season is nearly over now. The Trust will be involved long term I hope, I will be going out to India regularly, from the UK or the US, I leave for another trip on Wednesday. We shall be training staff and making sure that the vultures in captivity are well and healthy and will eventually breed. The trust is going to be asked for ÂŁ10,000 at the next meeting and will have a presentation from those included in the project. It is a very long term commitment, but vital if we are not to lose three species of quite wonderful birds to a drug that was never intended to do anything but alleviate pain. In the meantime we are carrying out a survey on captive vultures around the world to see what NSAIDs have been used on them and to what effect. We have given NSAIDs to a Eurasian Griffon Vulture here and used one that had no ill effects, so that sort of information is useful for the future.
Babies so far this year……………….. We had a slow and disappointing start to the season, mainly I think because of the very cold spells of weather that really do make a difference to the performance of the birds and the eggs. We have two young Tawny Eagles back with their Grandparents, but failed to hatch any of the African Fish Eagles, which was very sad. The Verreaux eggs are running now, and the Brahminy Kites laid, which was very exciting, however it just goes to show that you should never get too excited as they then ate the eggs. The Eastern Chanting Goshawk is on one egg and we are hopeful for that and the Greater Kestrel eggs are due soon.
NEW INCUBATOR FROM BRINSEA Over the past two years we have been testing a new incubator from Brinsea, up until that point we have been using the Brinsea Octagon which is small incubator and we have a number of them to hold all the eggs that we have here. The Brinsea Contact Incubator is a new concept, normally incubators are one of two types. The still air incubator is basically a box with a heater and temperature controls but the air within the
incubator does not move, hence the name still air. This is probably the oldest type of incubator.
Because of the delay in the move we had a large number of birds that were not paired up, so some rapid moving of birds got a number of new pairs together, however we are not expecting much for this breeding season as most of them paired late. Some changes have worked though, which is important for us in the move. The female Eurasian Eagle Owl was paired with a male who completely ignored her, however the two other males that were together were behaving as a pair, so we switched the two males and hey presto—two fertile eggs. We did the same thing with a pair of African Spotted Eagle Owls and have two very nice babies. This really helps as it means we know we are taking viable breeding pairs with us. Because of the cold many of the birds are late laying, but this year for the first time Real our female Andean Condor laid an egg. It will of course not be fertile as she is an imprint bird and we have no male, but it is an impressive egg that is for sure.
Then came the forced air incubator, where the heating element has a fan close by which pushes of forces the air over the element and thus wamrs the whole incubator. Brinsea wanted to get an incubator that was more like a bird, so they invented one that has a heating element and a fan, but the warm air fills a bag which you can see in the pictures and this bag sits on top of the eggs, warming them from the top as an incubating bird would do. The fan keeps the bag down on the eggs, and once an hour, or whatever you set the timer at, the fan reverses and pulls the bag off the eggs so that they can turn, then the bag reflats and covers the eggs again. We have been very happy with the results over the last two years. The incubator is computerised and keeps the temperature and humidity at whatever you like to set it at. However it always has to be remembered that the ambient temperature and humidity of your incubation room, has a significant part to play in how your incubator works. Here is hoping we have a good breeding season, as next year we will probably have a great deal less eggs, while the birds settle in their new home.
Update on the move Are we still going to have the move and the changes to the Centre—yes. Can I tell you who or what the future of the Centre here in the UK is—no, not yet. So what is happening. Well I firstly should apologise if the last newsletter sounded somewhat low in tone, I did not deal well with the decision to delay the move for nearly a year, it was a hard decision to make and had huge implications for the Centre here. However we are nearly through the worst time of the year financially, and if we have good attendance over Easter and the rest of the year, we will be fine. As I said at the start, the sale of the Centre has not gone smoothly, I guess selling a place like this would always be hard anyway. I was lucky enough to get a free article on the place in the Sunday Times recently and that has brought a great deal of interest, by the time I leave for India on Wednesday, we will have had eight people round in less than two weeks, which is cheering. Some of them seem interested, and all, you will be glad to hear, want to continue running it as a place open to the public. So we are doing our level best to give the Centre here, the staff and the birds that are staying, a long term and good future.
I got back from a trip to the US six days ago. It was great to see the new Center grounds, which are being hand cleared and look quite lovely—very different from here, more wild and natural than some parts of NBPC, but nevertheless, a great place to be. During the ten days I was there Jim and I rushed around seeing people, giving lectures on what we are doing, planning, seeing the architects and on my last day running an event on our new grounds. It was very odd to have flown a Lanner falcon on demonstration at the new Center in South Carolina on Saturday and then to have flown his brother at NBPC in Gloucestershire on Monday! The pictures show the prototype of two of the eagle enclosures, we are testing various materials for the cladding and you can see that the design is very different from what we have here. That is because the weather is very different and we have to consider the heat as well as the cold. Snow is not a problem in South Carolina, nor weeks of rain at a time, thank goodness. You can also see a wider picture of the grounds, with the eagle enclosure in the trees to the left and one of the lakes glinting in the distance, plus Capers, Jim’s Spaniel! The last picture shows some of the work that is being done at SCCBP’s clinic, which will be a large part of the merger The building of the enclosures starts in June, with the other buildings to follow. We are moving the birds on the weekend of November 6/7th and they should come out of quarantine mid December and all be in their new homes by Christmas this year. That should be in time to miss all the breeding of even the early layers, although I am hoping the Indian Eagle Owls will delay a little! I think I have at least two more trips before the move and I am hoping to persuade Jim to come over here once more as well. However for now the NBPC remains here, up and running, looking wonderful and I hope we will see you visit before the end of this coming season. If you want to check I will be here personally, ring, my staff always know where I am—roughly!