Nutmeg, Lanner Falcon. Windyridge Wildlife Photography

We're having a bit of a heat wave at the moment (something I had never anticipated having only seen Muncaster in the cold and wet before taking the centre on) which has made for a lovely change. The weather is good for visitor numbers but offers up new challenges for the team working within the centre. We have our weathering lawn now complete which means all the tethered birds can sit safely on the lawn during the day. This doesn't however provide us with provision for very hot days (such as today!) or the very wet weather. The team at Muncaster have been working furiously to complete our mews which is looking great I think - thank you, guys for the speed and quality of the job being done. It both completes the centre nicely and offers the practical use of being able to safely tether birds under shelter.

New mews going up 

As a team we decided on a theme for naming young birds that come into the centre this year as we have had a couple of new arrivals at the centre over the past few weeks. We decided to go with species tree found in Britain. So we have Rowan, a young tiercel Barbary Falcon whom I picked up from Mike at Icarus Falconry in Northamptonshire and he's a really lovely bird - fantastic temperament and a little stunner. His training is going well and he should fly loose for the first time by the end of the week. Spindle and Elder are our two young Barn Owls from HCT and they are quite a handful at the moment. We had an incident with one of them last week meaning that the whole team ended up looking for them until late in the evening (thank goodness for the light nights). Elder has managed to get himself to the top of the tallest tree and was refusing to budge, Martin from the forestry department did a Stirling job of climbing to the top of the tree to retrieve him! Thank you Martin! We have since had a bit of a rethink on how we are going to fly them both and hope they will be show-stoppers in the new show later in the summer.

Rowan, Barbary Falcon

The new morning show, A World of Owls is at 11:30am daily now up on the Wildflower Meadow. Its a lovely demo and has been up and running for previews all this week and has had its first official day of the season today. As the name suggests its a completely owl orientated show and we've tried to really show of the natural attributes of each species in the way we fly them. If you like Barn Owls then this is the show for you as Mulberry's section of the show is wonderful. We've been very pleased with her. I'll say no more about it so if you want to know more then you'll just have to come and visit!

Mulberry

We are now about to enter into the really busy period with the school holidays about to start and so the birds and staff will have their work cut out but for just a couple of months in I think the displays are fantastic and we've had heaps of positive feedback from visitors which spurs us on. We have also just welcomed Dawn onto our voluntary team so she's going to be helping us two days a week which will be fantastic. I'm hoping we might get a few more people who can help us out over the summer too.

I am also very grateful to those visitors who have gone the extra mile to support us by adopting one of our birds (for just £25.00 for the entire year I think its a bargain). It really helps the work we do here so thank you. A role of honor of all the people who have adopted a bird can be found on the website http://www.muncaster.co.uk/hawk-owl-centre and we are working on getting adopters names onto the aviaries so everyone can see how generous and kind you all are!

Stuart working with Cavalli, Verreaux's Eagle Owl