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.

This Valentines Day, say it with chicken?

Valentines Day at the Scottish Owl Centre, and lurrve is in the air…

… for some of the owls at least!

Some of the young couples have been mentioned in my blog before; the Great Horned Owls that hoot through the night, the Siberian Eagle Owls, the Tropical Screech Owls, all have been hooting and calling for some time now. Last month the female Siberian Eagle Owl laid two eggs – she didn’t sit on them and they weren’t fertile, but it was a promising start as the pair had only been together around 5 months. The male is still hooting from evening to dawn and takes her gifts of food. I have been noticing something strange in their aviary the last few days and today came to a theory about what is going on…

Our aviaries are brand new, obviously, and so far haven’t had much in the way of plants put in them. One or two do have small leylandii conifer trees planted in them, and the Siberian Eagle Owl pen is one of them. As you can see from the photo here this tree does not look happy! Looking closer you can see the bark has been ‘nibbled’ and a lot of bits of branches and leaves have been pulled off. Is the female getting broody? Is she pulling at nesting material? Most owls don’t make nests, just use someone elses old one, but what other reason could there be? Maybe it isn’t her, maybe it is the male? Say it with flowers, or say it with chewed up bits of leylandii tree? A mystery!

Well that’s something I’ll have to keep watching and wondering, but what about new romance? Well we have that too.

Our pair of Snowy Owls have bred in the past and have been one of the most easily settled in the new location for the Scottish Owl Centre. The male in particular seems to really enjoy sitting on the huge rocks quite close to the front of the aviary, where he often catches a bit of sun. Well today sunbathing wasn’t the only thing on his mind. Food is another of his most favourite things in the whole world, so for him to offer some to his mate shows true adoration! With Snowy Owls it isn’t just a case of ‘hoot hoot here have some food’, no, he has a very special dance.

It does look bizarre to you and me, but he picks up some food in his bill and shuffles about making very odd noises, more like a pig than a bird! His body crouched low to the ground and his wings held up half open from his body, he sways his head left and right. He does look very silly! At the moment she seems to agree, not being impressed one bit. Keep in there lad, even Romeo didn’t win fair Juliet in one day!

I will of course keep you updated on how our hopeful romances progress – hopefully we will see some more eggs soon!

Not all of our owls are in pairs. Some are single birds. We’re trying our best to find them a partner and some have already been located. In a few weeks we will have new birds arriving at the Centre. A mate for our Spectacled Owl, a mate for our Striped Owl, one for our African Wood Owl, all arriving before we open to the public. There are a few owls that we still haven’t found a pair for yet. So it’s a bit of Lonely Hearts for our hopeful singles.

And then of course there is Sarabi the Milky Eagle Owl. Although not technically looking for a male Milky Eagle Owl as she is an imprint, and doesn’t know she is an owl. She has been feeling a little broody lately. She sang to me while I was fitting a catch to the back of the door of her aviary today. Thanks Sarabi, lovely voice!

And with that I think I’d better sign off before it gets too silly round here! Gnite all!

Slippery When Wet

Another good day of progress at the Scottish Owl Centre today!

As the forecasted ‘freezing rain’ didn’t arrive – at least where we are – and it seemed to be the ordinary kind falling, it meant the morning started off just a little damp but a lot milder than the last two days. Good news when you work outdoors all day! If only the ice hadn’t turned to mud instead…we were slipping about all day one way or another.

The work on ‘Phase Two’ aviaries has really come on in the last few days but today I got a real idea of the shape and size of the enclosures. As you can see from the pictures, the area that just last week was a forest of bare upright poles set into the ground in some complex pattern is now filled with the frames and roofing of four aviaries in the Rain Forest Realm and the photographic area is now roofed too. The Little Owl aviary is there now as well and waiting for the door and mesh. Next to that pen I could see today how long the aviary will be for the Long-eared Owls too. A nice length will be good for the birds that hunt in forest clearings and along hedgerows when out in the wild.

Aviary size is something that is very important of course, to the owl, to the visitor and to the keepers and those looking after these birds in captivity. Ideally you want a large space for the birds, but the danger there is that if the aviary is too big and made of solid mesh walls and roof then the bird may injure itself if panicked into flying into it at speed. At the new site for the Scottish Owl Centre we have some of the largest aviaries I’ve ever seen for owls in the UK – for species like the Siberian Eagle Owls, Great Horned Owls, Ural Owls and the Snowy Owls – tall and long and giving plenty of space to fly. They are not too large though, just a good size for these birds.

Speaking of size… the best thing of the day for me today was seeing the HUGE wingspan of the Milky Eagle Owl in flight! This of course was Sarabi, or Sarah to her old friends, one of our ‘imprint’ birds that are trained to take part in public flying demonstrations. If you’ve been reading any of my previous blog entries you probably know that she has been doing very well in her training so far. Starting with short hops from perch to glove for food in her aviary, she then did so well sitting on the glove that we could go for walkabouts around the park and into Reception, where she met some of the local people who come to Polkemmet Country Park either to play golf, walk the dog, walk themselves, or to visit the cafe (it’s the awesome cupcakes I tell you!). You may have read in my blog that Sarabi has started to fly free in the Indoor Display Arena. On two occasions now she has made two flights covering half the distance of the arena. I have been so surprised each time! Well today we took Flying Lessons to another couple of levels. Today she weighed in at 2017 grams and was much more interested in food and her surroundings. Setting her on a middle perch I called her to fly half the length of the room – like the last two times. No problem. Then I placed her on the perch at one end of the arena and walked right the way down to the other end. With little hesitation she flew, and wow! She flew slow and quite low but I was really taken with her wings, so long! She looked fantastic and flew the whole length two more times before I gave her a short flight and her reward. As we stood amazed we reckoned this was probably the furthest this owl has flown in a long long time. We are really pleased to be able to give her this space and this chance to show off. If she can keep this up she will be a real star in our shows! Fingers crossed for her then

And that’s my lot for today so I’ll sign out. Take care all, gnite

Thaw today, gone tomorrow?

Another day of intense cleaning of the aviaries for me. With the weather mild for the most part we reached the balmy heights of 7 degrees above freezing. This may be short lived if the weather forecasters are right about what’s coming tomorrow. There is an Amber alert on for the Highlands, Central and Borders regions for snow tomorrow. All the more reason to make the most of the day to get more cleaning done. I found myself surprised by how close the male Snowy Owl will allow me to get to him before making a fuss or flying away. Their aviary is nice and long – longer than any I have seen before – so they have plenty of space to keep to the opposite end when I’m in there cleaning. It’s nice that he is comfortable enough to let me get that close before moving and it will help me get a good look at him without catching him up.

Two weeks ago we had our first (and so far only) visit from our local vet. We wanted our male Snowy checked up as we had seen a lump or growth sticking out through the feathers of his left wing. The vet gave us the options and suggested we keep monitoring the bird. If the lump got larger or the bird showed signs of distress then the vet would remove it, possibly with laser surgery. Today I could see how calm and peaceful the owl was, then getting so close I could look at his wing. I couldn’t see any outward sign of the lump at all. It might well still be there but now covered by new (or better preened) feathers. The vet said it might just sort itself out naturally so I think we just need to keep on watching and checking periodically. He’s a very nice bird, so is the female, and they are both in great health. I have never seen captive Snowy Owls fly so much or so well. In the wild their flight is described more like a peregrine than an owl. I find that very hard to imagine but it is a real pleasure to see these two fly so well in their nice long aviary.

Work is still going forward on the rest of the aviaries of course. Today half of the joiners worked on the indoor arena doors while the other half finished a roof and resumed work on what will be the MacInders Eagle Owl and Milky Eagle Owl pens. These are both African species and it will be nice to see them next door to each other. It will be interesting to try to find appropriate plants to go in their pens, it is hardly an african climate here in Scotland at any time of the year!

Once the centre is built and ready to be opened to the public there will be advertising all over the place of course, but already word of mouth is bringing people to the park to see what is going on. Today Reception also started getting phone calls from people asking if the new owl centre is open yet. Great stuff. We’re really looking forward to opening and the more we talk about how the indoor displays will be the more exciting it all becomes.

I’ll sign off today with a picture of the indoor arena, now with roof but still a lot of work to be done.

I hope you are all keeping warm and snug and shall ‘see’ you all again tomorrow.

Gnite!

House call

 

Well today was an eventful day for one reason or another. For one thing the SUN was shining! Yes blue sky and sunshine. I’ll take a photo next time I promise.

Today I split my time between cleaning aviaries and feeding, the basics of any keeper job, spending some time with the trained ‘arena’ birds, and meeting our local vet for the first time.

Ironically after my post of a day or two ago mentioning Snowy Owls, it came to our attention that our male Snowy had a patch of raised bare skin on his left wing. We didn’t know what it was but there’s no taking chances with the unknown when it comes to the health of birds in your care. Time to make our introductions to the local veterinary practice. Most often in collections, the birds are taken in a box to the vet’s surgery. For this occasion a house call was a good option. Seeing the owl behaving normally in it’s enclosure gives a better opportunity to get a first idea of it’s well being. The bird does not appear in discomfort or distress, and it can certainly fly! Wanting a closer look at this lump or raised area of the wing, the vet asked me how easy it was to catch this bird. “I’ll tell you in a couple of minutes, I’ve never caught it before!” I replied. The owl didn’t give me too much of a runaround, and once cradled in my arms like a baby the vet could get a good look at that wing. The advice given was to monitor the bird for a week or two then report back. It is possible the owl gets the ‘benefit’ of the vet practice’s new fangled laser device to remove the lump. I’m not sure the owl will appreciate that this procedure is a vast improvement on what could have been done and will be over pretty quick too. Set phasers to stun! We shall monitor and see how it goes. I’ll update on this at a later date.

I have a few pics I took of the members of the ‘arena’ team that I spent time with today, and thought you might like to ‘meet’ them too.

^  Tiger, the Brown Wood Owl

^  Broo, the European Eagle Owl, wants to know if you have her food

 

^

Oulu, the Great Grey Owl. I like to get pictures that are a bit different from those you usually see, and from different angles or focus on one feature of the bird or object. I like these pictures of Oulu, showing her face and facial disc and colours and patterns.

I do enjoy my photography and I’ve had some fantastic subjects for my pictures over the years. I hope to get many more this coming year. I received a ‘remote release cable’ for my DSLR camera in the post today and I look forward to playing with some ideas for exciting shots of the trained birds at the Scottish Owl Centre this year. So, watch this space if you like these pics I guess!

So that’s it for today’s blog post, til the next time, g’nite!

Where the wind blows

Once again the weather threatened to steal the show here today. Severe winds gusting up to 90mph blew through Scotland’s central belt, causing damage and chaos. In Polkemmet Country Park I hear at least 16 large trees were blown down. I helped clear some out of the roads and paths as I went about my tasks today.The one in the picture here was around 60 feet tall but conveniently fell just at the edge of a car park.

Naturally my first task of the day was to check on the owls and make sure they were all safe and well. Once again I had to marvel at the standard of building in the aviaries and the  (partially roofed) indoor display area. No damage anywhere and just a bit of debris blowing about. To my surprise two of the joiners and painter arrived for work in the morning. Dedication for sure! They must breed a hardy bunch of workmen up here in Scotland as the joiners merely shrugged and continued their work on the roof all day. I myself drew out three nestboxes on wooden boards ready to cut out tomorrow, hopefully.

With trees and branches blowing down all around the park I found the mercenary in me coming to the fore – I would prefer to call it resourcefulness! Damage to the beautiful Cedar of Lebanon granted me an opportunity to gather up fallen branches for use in some of the smaller aviaries. With needles and cones still on the branches they will give a natural look to the aviary as well as give the owl more shelter and feeling of security. I hope to get them in the pens soon.

So this weather eh? This is not the first set of strong wind and gales in these parts in recent weeks, and looking at the weather patterns I started to wonder if perhaps winds from the north might bring some other visitors with them…

Over in America at the moment they are experiencing an ‘irruption’ of Snowy Owls. In years when food is in good supply most creatures will breed in larger numbers, but when winter comes along and the supply dwindles, the choices are to stay and starve or to move on. This is just what is happening over in the States lately.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-snowy-owl-20111214,0,2761678.story

Can you imagine a Snowy Owl in Hawaii??? Over in Europe similar things happen. I believe one Snowy Owl made it down to the Mediterranean islands one year! This is also how in years past Snowy Owls came to stay in Scotland…

Following an irruption, a number of Snowy Owls visited then stayed put on the remote islands of the Outer Hebrides, and there they remained as a breeding colony  yet gradually diminishing in number until the last male departed sometime in the early 90′s. Since then there have been regular visitors of the Snowy kind, some linger around the UK for weeks before returning north again. So what I’m wondering is, will 2012 be the year the Snowy Owls return in number to Scotland? Could they linger again and breed? I don’t know to be honest but I do think it would be wonderful! I guess everyone should keep their eyes open, and places like the Scottish Owl Centre should pay a little more attention when people report seeing ‘huge white owl’ on their travels…

To round up today’s blog then, here’s a gratuitous picture of one of our Snowy Owls. Enjoy! See you next time!