Ironic

It was a quieter day at the Scottish Owl Centre today, with the Easter school break over and many people back at work again. We did get some visitors though, including a group who arrived to see one of our flying displays.

For the first display I decided to try Hudson in his first appearance with an audience. He has been flying well in training apart from his distraction due to the speaker system. I thought a small audience and speakers switched off would be a fair chance for him to get used to one thing before the whole works. I thought wrong.

Hudson weighed in lighter than the last time I flew him myself, so he should have been ready and eager. For some reason he just wasn’t in the zone. He didn’t seem fussed that there were strange people in the arena, but he still wasn’t interested in flying, or food. So that was a bit of a let down! Oh well, he just wasn’t ready. Everyone has an off day.

Lofty and Sarabi weren’t on their best form either, but at least they flew!

As usual, the lunchtime line up of Hosking the Tawny Owl, Bruce the Boobook Owl, and Oulu the Great Grey Owl wowed the audience and everyone went away smiling.

The afternoon was quieter, with no visitors for the flying display, so I flew Prince the Ashy Faced Owl anyway. It was a shame there was no audience as he was amazing, flew just where I wanted him to go every time. He flew long down the length of the arena, up to the corner perch, across to the opposite corner, repeatedly. He flew diagonally over the benches to land on my glove each way I could think of. Prince was a little star! He’s now officially promoted to my favourite owl again after going off the rails a little. He still needs a bit of socialising on the glove so I hope to spend a little time with him on walkabout as often as I can, plus fly him in the displays. How ironic that the best bird I flew today was Prince and there was nobody else to appreciate it!

In other news our elderly Long-eared Owl is still with us despite the odds. She had eaten overnight and ate again today. I don’t see that she is improving or recovering, but have to admire the strength of her will to live. As long as she keeps on trying then I will too. Tonight she is indoors again with food cut into pieces for her should she want it.

Anyway I’m signing off and will check on her first thing. ‘Til tomorrow, gnite.

A Long day

Firstly, thanks to everyone who commented and enquired about our ill female Long-eared Owl. She made it through the night, but barely. She had eaten a little of the food I had left for her, but was sitting on the ground in her aviary. She remained there all day, moving position occasionally but not able to get up to a perch. I thought that each time I looked in on her she would be gone but she did hang on through the day. By closing time I had decided to put her into a carrying box and keep her indoors tonight. The weather has been a crazy mix here in West Lothian, with glorious sunshine in the morning being split in the afternoon by wintry showers. Brief hail and attempts at snow passed through as the afternoon went on and the forecast overnight is for the temperature to drop below freezing. I didn’t want the owl to be outdoors in that. I left her in the carry box in our Prep room with some food cut up into pieces. She may not make it through the night but at least she will have shelter, security and dignity. I will check on her first thing in the morning.

I was feeling quite wiped out and glum today, perhaps through worry about the Long-eared Owl. We have over 80 owls in the collection at present, but the health and welfare of each and every one of them is on my mind every day. It’s hard not to get attached when you are watching for and feeding them all every day. I don’t know if this is healthy but I wouldn’t want to change; better to care a lot than not enough in my opinion.

I was able to build a nesting area for our Snowy Owls this morning, thanks to having new volunteer Linda around to hose and clean aviaries while I worked in the Snowy pen. Snowy Owls are one of many of the larger owl species that nest on the ground, so I tried to build a natural looking low screen of rocks in a corner. Part of their courtship involves the male taking food to a selected nest site and performing an odd little dance with his wings half folded, making strange pig-like sounds with the food still in his bill. Now there is a nest site I hope he takes the hint. Today he spent a lot of time snoozing in the sunshine!

My talks today didn’t have their usual zest as I lacked the energy, but the owls I flew all performed great. Prince is really getting the hang of it all now and I completely trusted him to be in the right place at the right time. I flew Kenya for the second time too, and like yesterday she zipped around the arena. Sarabi added to her repertoire by flying down to a bench or the ground and showing her funny walk. Seeing her swoop down just inches over the heads of the front row of the audience still puts a big grin on my face though, and seeing the reaction of the audience themselves is just magic. Oulu the Great Grey Owl is another one that does this in her performance, and I look forward to flying her eventually too. We have such a diverse team for our shows I’m really enjoying getting to know them all one by one.

On my rounds feeding the collection this afternoon I got a really good view of one of the Great Horned owlets. The pair of them are doing well and just getting to the size where their heads can be seen over the front panel of the nest ledge. I was pleased that the female didn’t immediately cover her owlet up as I slowly advanced to take a photo, and the owlet seemed curious to see what I was doing too.

Our Little Owls have finally discovered the nestbox I put in their aviary earlier this week. On my feeding rounds I saw one of them peeking out of the hole at the front of the box. Fingers crossed they decide to breed this year too.

The two Tawny Owls are still sitting in the nestbox they share, both sitting on eggs. Food is disappearing from the ground where I put it each day so at least one of them is eating, but after the problem with the Long-eared Owl I am keeping a special eye on them and their food intake. Normally, a female will sit on eggs for as long as she can without a mate taking food to her, then she will abandon the nest and seek out food. In the case of these Tawny Owls we could either let them choose to stay or leave when they are ready – then boost the amount of food supplied, or we could intervene and remove the eggs. Doing this though may cause them both to just lay more eggs to replace the first ones lost, and this could weaken them further. Better to let nature take its course but be watchful for their need for more food. These owls are younger and stronger than the Long-eared Owl. I also wouldn’t be too surprised if one female covers both clutches of eggs while the other nips out to eat. I have seen Eagle Owls and Brown Wood Owls do just that, so you never know. One thing I do know is that owls are amazing and complex creatures, how could I not love them?

Right, I’m signing off. As always, ‘til tomorrow goodnight owl.

Never a dull day

It had already been an interesting day for me even before the doors opened to the public. I start early of course, checking that the owls are all okay, cleaning the aviaries, switching things on and tidying up, all to get the centre ship-shape and ready for visitors.

This morning I used the quiet time to check on some of the nestboxes too. I was surprised by what I found. Firstly, I found that our pair of Tawny Owls are both girls; both are sitting on two eggs each and both in the same nestbox designed for one owl on her own! Okay so they won’t hatch but we know we have to healthy egg laying female Tawny Owls at least. We will get in a male but that will be too late for this breeding season. Oh well, at least they seem happy.

The less happy surprise was that the female Long-eared Owl was not in her nest box this morning. She has been in there for a few days and no doubt had some eggs she was incubating. So what had gone wrong? Well later in the day some visitors came to find me to report that she was on the ground and looked unwell. I investigated immediately and picked her up. She did indeed look unwell. Gently feeling her keel bone I could feel it quite prominently. She was quite thin and weak. No doubt the days spent on the nest had been without food. The problem for this poor girl seems to stem from the fact that she has no mate. There are three Long-eared Owls in the aviary and she evidently was the odd one out. Shame then that she was the one fit and ready to lay eggs. With no male to feed her she had stayed on her eggs for as long as she could hold out, but finally had to leave the nest to find something to eat. Seeing the code on the ring (or band) on her leg I recognised the code as one from my last place of work. The number was in the double figures, but the last ring I remember using before leaving was 375, so you can imagine how long ago this bird was ringed; she is very old now! I knew the eggs were no good now, cold and abandoned, but my concern was for the owl. I took her round to the off view aviaries where the trained owls live. We have spare aviaries there and I put the Long-eared Owl in one of these to monitor and to let her settle out of the public gaze. I gave her a lot of food but cut it into easier to eat pieces, then left it with her to eat when she felt ready. She looked ropey I am sad to say, and I fear she may not make it through the night. I really hope she does.  :(

As often happens, a sad event was balanced out with a happier event. Another nest I checked this morning was the African Wood Owl box. I found that the owl occupying this box was sitting on two eggs. Her mate does sit close by the box during the day so that hopefully means these eggs are viable. I checked my diary and noted down an estimated date for hatching. I really hope these do breed as I have never seen owlets from African Wood Owls before. This also makes it two pairs of owls in the Rainforest Realm breeding within weeks of moving in to the newly completed exhibit, which is amazing.

In our flying displays today I flew the usual suspects; Lofty the Barn Owl and Sarabi the Milky Eagle Owl in the morning show, but they followed Broo the Eurasian Eagle Owl making her public debut! She was a bit unsure and slow to move but you can expect that from the first time with an audience. The fact that she moved at all was great in itself, but her little walk back into her ‘home’ at the end of her display was fun and the audience laughed.

In my afternoon show I flew Kenya the White Faced Owl for the first time. She was hungry and a bit grumpy at having to wait all day for her turn (she usually flies first thing in the morning show), but this meant that she whizzed around the arena for me. My talk for her was less good but that will improve with practice. She was great fun to fly!

Well I think that’s about it for tonight. I’ll be up early to check on that Long-eared Owl. Fingers crossed for her.

‘Til tomorrow then, goodnight.

Nice to Meet you

As usual I had quite a busy day.

Starting out bright and early I managed to encourage one of the hosepipes to work in the trained owl section, so I set about cleaning. After a good while without a water supply it will take me some time (and a lot of elbow grease!) to get the centre back up to acceptable standard. It took me most of the morning just to do one section. Word from the plumbers is ‘Thursday at the latest’ so I’ll just have to cross my fingers for the rest of the repairs and be patient.

Milder weather continues in West Lothian and this helped not just me but all of the guys working on building the new aviaries. Much of the work now is on the framework of the British Owl section, having set out the frames for the tropical Realm of the Rainforest area last week. They aim to get at least all this part of the build done by the end of this week, ready for the ground work contractors to come in next week and lay the remaining paths and dig holes for trees.

With the building nearing completion there is more thought going into the planting in and around the aviaries, paths and centre in general. Today we started to plan the slight alterations we want to make to the Long-eared Owl aviary. Now we have a Short-eared Owl too we aim to put them together in one enclosure. The Short-eared, or Shorty to his friends, came from the wild so is quite a nervous bird. His damaged wing will never fully heal so he will never be fit enough to survive in the wild unfortunately, but we will take good care of him (or her!) at the Scottish Owl Centre. Putting it in with the Long-eared will help to keep it calm and provide company as well. As I mentioned in another blog, these birds are from open countryside, and we discussed today how we can landscape and plant the long aviary to show a range of open, moorland-like habitat along to the tree line where the Long-eared are found. When the ground workers dig the holes for tree planting the excess soil dug will go towards landscaping a raised area of the Long and Short-eared enclosure.  ‘Shorty’ will quite likely perch up with the other birds but we aim to lay out the enclosure to give whatever options will make it comfortable.

Today’s Meet the Keeper with an Owl session at midday was pretty busy today! I had a somewhat grumpy Prince, the Ashy Faced Owl, with me today. It was nice to see so many people who had come especially to see (the owl!) and quite a crowd formed in the courtyard by the park Reception and cafe. My talk was a bit rough and ready as it’s been a while since I last gave a talk to more than a few people together, but I enjoyed it and it was good practice for when we open. I also got to learn a couple more new words of Scots to add to my growing vocabulary! One of my reasons for doing the Meet’n'greet was to give people an opportunity to not just see one of the owls that are moving into the new centre, but to hear about the exciting plans that we have for the site. Everyone I’ve met so far has been very pleased to hear about the new venture and say they will come back once we’re open to the public. I think we could be very busy indeed, which is excellent!

I’ll be out at midday each day of the school holidays this week, taking a different bird each day. I still want to take Kenya the White Faced Owl out so maybe it will be her turn tomorrow?

Til then, gnite!