Smells Like Surgical Spirit

Quite an odd day at the Scottish Owl Centre today. Well, it’s not every day you take an adult male Snowy Owl to the local vets to have laser surgery (thankfully).

We’ve been monitoring the bird since the beginning of the year, and those who have followed this blog since January may remember the first time we called out the vet it was to look at the large swelling on the owl’s left wing. The diagnosis then was that this was a benign lump of fatty tissue, a xanthoma, and that the bird was not affected by its presence. In the last few weeks we have seen it become more prominent, possibly due to the hot weather. The bird was caught up at the weekend when we had a spot inspection by animal welfare inspectors and the decision was made to seek veterinary advice once again. (More on that inspection later).

Our local veterinary practice is very modern and well equipped and this morning a surgical laser was used to cut the lump off. The male Snowy is quite a calm bird once in the hand and so the vet decided that a local anaesthetic would be the best choice for the procedure. Once the area was frozen we all had to don protective goggles as the vet used the surgical laser to cut the tissue away. I won’t go into more gory detail but it was quite fascinating to observe. As fascinated as I was, after 45 minutes of this I was beginning to feel a bit hot and stuffy. I was wrapped up in four layers this morning, including waterproofs for the heavy rain, plus my ‘summer cold’ meant I could barely breathe. I thought I just needed to cool down but when the vet suggested I step outside for a moment I suddenly felt a bit wobbly! The cool air hit me and for one of the first times in my life I felt faint! I had to sit out the rest of the operation and hand over to Rod to handle the owl. Another 45 minutes later and the procedure was all done. I was disappointed not to have seen the whole thing through as I wasn’t squeamish about any of it, just overheated. The main thing though was that the Snowy Owl was sat up in his carry box looking a bit indignant about what had been done to him, but otherwise looked okay.

The prognosis from the vet was good. The lump had been an abscess and was removed quite easily. He felt that the bird could be observed for an hour or so then released into its aviary. Erring on caution we decided to keep the owl indoors overnight and see how it fares.

After a breath of fresh air and a trip back to the owl centre I was feeling more myself, a ‘medicinal’ ice cream later, and I felt fine – like I’d been the patient all along! Oh dear, never mind!

Back in the centre we did some checking on the nesting birds this afternoon. A few disappointments, a couple of surprises, some good news.

Our Little Owl female is still incubating 5 eggs, but they’re a little overdue now. The Mottled Owl has given up and thrown out a single infertile egg. The African Wood Owl had done the same. The White Faced Owl has thrown out an egg with a fully grown owlet inside but is still sitting on two eggs – fingers crossed one is fertile and she doesn’t throw it out too. Not a good start…

Better news came from the Tropical Screech Owl nestbox. I’d noted that the female hadn’t come out of the box since her last infertile eggs were removed, checking today we found she has ‘recycled’ and laid 3 more eggs. Fingers crossed that this clutch are fertile! One of our two female Ferruginous Pygmy Owls has laid another 3 eggs too, making 9 between the two girls – we need to get a male this year!

Best news still came from the Ashy Faced Owls, who are feeding at least one owlet! I got a glimpse of a small grey-white head yesterday while investigating owlet noises. Today we didn’t go in to look but watched as the male took all of the daily food delivery up to the box.

Ashy Faced Owlets would be fantastic for the centre’s first season in the new location. We’ll keep a close watch on them and hope they make it through to fledging safely.

I wrote up a list of nesting attempts made this year and came up with 15 species – not at all bad considering all the trauma and ordeal of moving to the new site. Even if we didn’t get any more owlets this year 15 species with eggs is a very respectable first season and gives us a lot of scope for next year. We’re not done with 2012 yet so let’s keep hoping for more fluffies this year!

Okay that’s my lot for tonight, I’m signing off and heading to bed. ‘til next time, goodnight.

Snoring

I haven’t been able to log into WordPress for the last few days, so apologies for the lack of blog entries. It isn’t the first time I’ve had problems with the site and I envision moving to a different host at some point. For now it appears I’m here.

We have been continuing to experience an overabundance of eggs in the collection this week, it seems to be the theme for the year. Well, except in the case of the Tropical Screech Owls who seem to have ‘lost’ their three eggs at some point. It isn’t unusual for a female to eat eggshell to get the calcium back into her system so I assume her eggs were infertile and she did some recycling of materials. It’s a shame but at least she laid some eggs to begin with. Maybe next year, with no disruption from moving home and the noise of a building site, they will have fertile eggs.

So like I say, an overabundance of eggs; we discovered on Thursday that our two female Ferruginous Pygmy Owls had six eggs between them, both sat in the same little nestbox. If only we had a male! We have the same situation with our Tawny Owls of course, with both girls sitting faithfully on four eggs each, squashed together in a nestbox built for one.

Our lone Southern Boobook Owl laid a second egg on Thursday, discarding it on the woodchip floor of her aviary. A more positive discovery was that our Little Owls are definitely nesting now, with the female sitting on five eggs. At least there is a pair of them, although they are unproven when it comes to breeding, so we can at least cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Even Oulu, our trained Great Grey Owl laid an egg yesterday! She’s been flying most days in our displays too! She has been heavier and in the mornings I have seen broody nesting behaviour from her, so I’m not so surprised that she is in condition and ready to breed. We will not fly her in shows now until we are sure she is not carrying any more eggs inside her. If she was, and they broke inside her, she could die of a condition known as egg peritonitis. Her egg, at this time of the year, has given me unexpected renewed hope that there may still be a breeding attempt from our pair of Great Greys in the collection.

At least all these eggs show that we have a lot of very healthy female owls in our collection.

I suppose if we were to look on the positive and hopeful side, there could still be time for a late breeding season this year. If we had a warm June through to late September that would give plenty of time for our owls to court, mate, incubate and raise owlets before winter comes. I don’t like looking on the gloomy side of things, and it has been disheartening lately seeing birds like our Northern Hawk Owls and Ural Owls breeding attempts result in infertile eggs. All we need is a good period of good weather…

Over in our display arena we have continued to train the smallest member of our team – smallest but not youngest. Poncho the Tropical Screech Owl has been flying really well these last few days. I still find it odd to see such a small owl flying around the arena but he acts like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Once he reached his ideal weight – just 100 grams! – and sat on the glove for half an hour or so, he figured it all out really quickly. Quicker than some of our larger owls!

Our youngest member of the team is doing well too. Sam the American Barn Owl already towers over little Poncho at just six weeks old. The owlet has been appearing in the displays this week and has begun to walk around, exploring. He or she (we won’t know which for at least another month or more) has been amusing us all with behaviour none of us have seen in an owlet before – snoring! The owlet seems to like standing with it’s chin resting on or against the top of the box and go to sleep. Then after a few minutes it begins to squeak. When I first heard it I thought there was something wrong with it, but it’s just sleeping! Maybe dreaming of mice?

Well I’ll sign off and get some sleep myself I think. No dreaming of mice though I hope! ‘Til next time then, gnite!

School Daze

We had our second school visit to the Scottish Owl Centre today. Getting the word out about the centre as an educational resource has been a high priority since opening day. Our first school visit was a few weeks ago and went so well I was really looking forward to the next one. Now we have two this week and more bookings are coming in daily.

Well to cut to the chase today’s visit went great. The school had travelled all the way from Edinburgh, and after an essential pit stop to the Park play area they came through to our flying display arena.

Our arena has enough seats for over two hundred people, so plenty of room for a school group and any day visitors that may wish to come along for the show too. We can theme our flying displays to whatever a school may want as they cover many topics in the school curriculum, and if a school is studying a particular topic in class then we can tailor our material to suit.

Today we started out with our baby, Sam the American Barn Owl. The children always love seeing a fluffy baby but it’s a great opportunity to learn about the life of an owl in the wild, how they live, nest, incubate and hatch the eggs, rear owlets, how long it takes for the owlets to grow up, when they get their feathers, how they learn to fly, how they learn to feed… all with a living (squeaking!) model there in front of them.

Next I flew Lofty, a three year old Barn Owl of the type you find out and around the UK, and in particular for these children, Scotland. The children here today had been reading ‘The owl who was afraid of the dark’ in class, so as I flew Lofty I asked them questions about the owls, to see what they had learned and remembered. Lofty himself was in a funny mood today, distracted by the strange pops and crackles coming from our speaker system today. We hope to have the problem fixed tomorrow but today it was a distraction we didn’t need. Having said that Lofty flew really well, choosing to fly lap after lap around the arena before landing on a perch at random. He didn’t go where I wanted him to go and when I wanted him to, but he looked fantastic all the same! I like to ask the group questions as I fly the birds, and enjoy seeing them think about what they are learning during the shows. My talk wasn’t quite as flowing or ordered as I’d like but it’ll get better each time.

After Lofty came Broo the Eurasian Eagle Owl. If Lofty flew well, floating round and round like a big white moth, well Broo had the children laughing and squealing all at once as she charged about over their heads and from one end of the arena to the other. It’s always spectacular to see the largest species of owl fly so close and Broo puts on a great show.

After the display I took the group on a ‘Walk to the North Pole’ guided tour. It was more of a whistle stop tour as the kids hadn’t had lunch. We ended up at the Snowy Owls of course, and of course they were a big hit.

The rest of the day was quiet in comparison, but with more odd weather that was understandable too. Sunshine and snow are not expected companions for May, but as long as there is more of the sunshine than of the snow it’s not all bad. Prince and Sarabi flew in the afternoon flying display, and Sam made another appearance in the arena, this time taking a few more steps to investigate the nearest bench. Between myself and volunteers Karen and Mhairi we set out a ‘feed tag’ system around the centre this afternoon too. This will help new staff and volunteers know what food to put in each pen each day. Eventually it all becomes clear and the tags won’t be needed but to start out it can be bewildering trying to remember what to put into over sixty aviaries!

Well I think it’s time I went about finding some food for myself, so I’ll sign off and see you next time. ‘Til then, gnite!

Dawn Chorus with a difference

This morning I found myself awake at 4 a.m. and unable to get back to sleep (that’s what I get for sleeping so much in my time off!). Lying in bed I enjoyed listening to one of the great wonders of the natural world; the Dawn Chorus – with a typically Scottish Owl Centre twist.

Living next door to a collection of over eighty owls I do hear the occasional hoot in the night, but not all owls are night time birds. At 4 a.m. though it was a Robin that I heard singing first, then to be accompanied by a ‘beep beep beep beep beep beep beep’ from our Pearl Spotted Owlet. It made a strange counterpoint to the melody of the classic sound of the British countryside, this tiny African owl and the song of the Robin.

After a while the owl was replaced by a Swallow singing from outside my bedroom window, then a Blackcap from the other side of the house. These two birds have recently returned on migration from their wintering grounds, and a very welcome return it is too. The Swallows must find their return to Polkemmet Country Park a bit of a strange experience this year, as the place they nested last year is quite a bit different now.

The Scottish Owl Centre, newly relocated from Campbelltown in Kintyre, is housed within the old Walled Garden that once belonged to a great mansion house. The mansion is long demolished, but in recent years the Walled Garden has been used for storage for council equipment and assorted materials. Among the assortment of sheds and garages the Swallows made their homes annually, raised their young, then left them for warmer climes and a food supply in winter.

For the first day or two since returning this year the birds sat on the power lines and took some time getting used to the new scene. Gone are the places they nested, replaced now by aviaries full of owls and other new constructions. Ever resourceful, the Swallows are simply inspecting the facilities and picking out new nest sites among our Education zone and wild bird hide. There’s even a Pied Wagtail trying to nest in the chute in the children’s climbing frame! Good luck to that one!

So, as I start my day and wonder what kind of weather we will be subjected to today I will leave you with this question; when did you last listen to the dawn chorus?

Laters all.

Cold day in the sun

Well one thing you will never be when it comes to Scottish weather is bored. No two days the same. After the rain, today was lovely and sunny. That sun was hardly cracking the flags but it was very welcome all the same.

The sun had dried out our Great Horned Owlets too, making them look more like the fluffy toy owls sold in the shop than real ‘in the feather’ owls. I enjoy watching them explore their aviary, and as I did the ‘food run’ at the end of the day one of them was walking around while the other was climbing up onto a tree stump beneath the parent’s favourite perch. It’s a nice stage in their life as they are so inquisitive.

There has been no more sign of new hatchings around the centre, with the African Wood, Brown Wood, and African Spotted Eagle Owls all in their estimated period for hatching. I don’t blame the female owls for sitting tight on their nests though, with such changeable weather we’ve been having. Any owlets would need protecting from the elements, especially when so small. All we can do is hope for the best and put a little extra food in every day.

We had a new owl arrive today, hopefully to join our flying team. A friend of mine, Amy, needed to find a good home for her African Spotted Eagle Owl and asked if we could take the bird in. I met Amy when she did a placement at the World Owl Trust, where I worked as a keeper. Because she knew how I worked and looked after the birds, Amy knew that I would look after ‘Bramble’ well, as will all of us at the centre. After a little while to settle into her new home we will spend some time with the owl and get her used to being around us, then see if she will sit on a gloved hand, and so on. Sometimes owls moving to new homes can take a while to settle, but within a few minutes of stepping out of the travel box and into the newly prepared aviary Bramble was perched and standing on one leg – a sign that the bird is relaxed and comfortable. She hooted her farewells to Amy but they will meet again soon. Amy is very welcome to come and visit Bramble any time.

I rounded off my half day today with something a little different. There has been one last member of the established flying display team to join the ranks flying in the new centre, but he has finally reached his ‘flying weight’ and is ready for training. Poncho is the smallest trained owl I have ever seen – a Tropical Screech Owl – and prior to coming to work at the Scottish Owl Centre I would scarcely have believed such a wee thing could be trained. Poncho has always regarded me with suspicion since I moved here, eyeing me from the corner of his aviary and not budging. Now he flies to the front of his pen and to the glove quite readily – ‘food is the great motivator in life’ as we used to say in shows. For the last few days we have taken turns in encouraging Poncho to make short hops and flights to the glove within the aviary or ‘prep room’. Today I waited until closing time and took the step to enter the arena with him. I was surprised but he flew really well! He didn’t fly the full length but several halves were plenty. It is strange to see such a small owl flying in an arena but fascinating too. We’ll keep working with him each day to continue the training, then eventually he will be ready to meet the public!

Okay time to sign off. Til tomorrow, gnite!

The Circle

The long Bank Holiday weekend, or almost a week really, has been quite a busy one at the Scottish Owl Centre. Numbers of visitors have been good and comments left in our visitors book have all been really complimentary about the centre and flying demonstrations.

As I’ve said in previous blog entries not everything can be positive and happy every day when working with animals. I’m sad to say that our elderly Long-eared Owl that we have been taking extra care of for the last couple of weeks passed away this morning. While she has been stable for the last few days her condition was not going to improve. The thought was that she had a stroke or tumour that led to loss of muscle control and mobility. We felt that the best option for her that would prevent suffering was for the vet to put her to sleep. The thing to remember is that she had lived a much longer life than if she were in the wild, maybe as much as a decade longer, and that she had the best quality of life that anyone could provide.

This is of course what we want for all of the birds in our care, a good long life in the best quality of life we can provide for them. Whilst aware of three or four of the owls with health conditions that we monitor, it is always a blessing that the vast majority of the collection is in fine health and clearly happy as we have so many either sitting on eggs or rearing offspring. Having a nearby veterinary surgery that we can call upon the services of at short notice is reassuring, but preventative rather than curative is always what we aim for.

On a day tinged with sadness at the passing of one of our collection there is also comfort to be found in caring for a new life. Our four week old American Barn Owl, tentatively named ‘Sam’ at the moment, grows daily and made his or her second appearance in a public ‘flying’ display today. It is too early to tell if the owlet is male or female. He or she is a sweet little thing, quite calm and curious about the world. The audience in the display were curious and amazed to see what a baby owl looks like too. Growing up in the public gaze and with multiple carers will help this little one become well accustomed to being around people, hopefully make it a happy and steady bird when it comes to being handled by staff and volunteers, and when flying in our displays.

American Barn Owls are beautiful birds. I have had the fortune to work with them before but never any trained for flying displays. I can’t help but wonder what our little one will look like when it has it’s full set of adult feathers!

Well that’s me done for this blog, time to sign off. Hopefully back on tomorrow, so see you then, gnite.

Seasons Greetings

Bank holiday weekends always bring us a mixed bag of weather. Today started out cool, became warmer, then late afternoon it snowed for a few minutes. Snowed! In May! I had read a news headline over breakfast that said the weekend daytime temperature would be colder than Christmas Day but I didn’t really believe it; then it snowed! Thankfully it only lasted a few minutes and within the hour there was blue sky and sunshine but it goes to show that the weather is just bizarre lately.

Talking about the weather is a British past time of course, but it matters more if you happen to work outdoors all day and your work involves looking after animals or birds outdoors all day too. I don’t know what our Great Horned Owlets thought of the wintry stuff falling from the sky today but at least they are covered in thick downy feathers. The second owlet jumped ship and left the nest overnight, joining the older one at ground level to explore the aviary. For most of the day the younger, smaller owlet sat as near to it’s parents perch as it could but by the afternoon it had wandered up to the rocky outcrop where the first owlet has taken up residence. I can hardly believe how ‘perfect’ they look sitting among the rocks – like we deliberately placed them as ornaments!

The Bank Holiday weather is set to turn to rain again over the next couple of days so we’ll be checking that the owlets are able to keep sheltered when we make our rounds first thing in the morning.

The flying displays today went well again, with good numbers of visitors making up the audiences for three shows. Hudson the Great Horned Owl made his second appearance with an audience today and flew more confidently again. Once in the right frame of mind to fly he is definitely a no nonsense kind of fella, as one or two members of the audience found as he clipped them on the back of the head with a wing tip on his way past them! It can be a bit of a surprise if you are the recipient of a wing on the back of the head but thankfully everyone so far has found it to be part of the thrill of the displays. Hudson has no intention of harming anyone, and it is only his wing tip he clips you around the ear with but I keep one eye on what he is up to all the time!

Our American Barn Owl made his or her debut appearance today, joining Hudson and Prince the Ashy Faced Owl in an all ‘Americas’ themed display. Of course the owlet is too young to fly – only four weeks old! – but was paraded around the audience like royalty by Lauren. The little owlet seemed to enjoy seeing all the new people and things and was very popular too.

I’ll sign off tonight with another pic of the little one. See you tomorrow, gnite!

Out and about

A busy day at the Scottish Owl Centre, thanks to some decent weather and a Bank Holiday weekend. The morning started off cold, with ice in some of the water dishes in the owl aviaries, then by the afternoon the sun was breaking through and bringing very welcome warmth. It’s still hard to believe that this is May with weather like this, unseasonably cold, and I hope we get more ‘normal’ weather soon. Until then we all have to make the most of the bit of sunshine when we get it. This afternoon was pleasant enough for even our male Milky Eagle Owl to spend a little quality time sunbathing on the ground in his aviary. One of our Great Horned Owlets chose last night to leave the nest so spent the day exploring their aviary at ground level. In the afternoon warmth the little adventurer was enjoying the sunshine while disguised as one of the rocks in the centre of the pen.

 

The ongoing saga of our elderly Long-eared Owl continues, and she is still eating well. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she is improving but today she seemed to have a good day, making some effort to preen herself and moving around her outdoor area a little. She made her way over to sit in the sunshine this afternoon, just as many other owls did likewise in their aviaries. This gave her some semblance of a normal quality of life. We are still making daily decisions about her but as long as she continues to have days as good as this we will keep helping her do so.

We had good numbers of visitors to the centre today and our flying displays were popular. In the third show I decided to fly Hudson the Great Horned Owl (elder brother of the little adventurer pictured above). One of the last of the team to join the regular flying displays, he has taken the longest to get into the right mood and weight to fly, and the longest to adjust to the new microphone system in the display arena. Unlike the single speaker system he grew up with, the new one has ‘surround sound’ with a speaker in the corners of the room. This has confused and distracted a few of the owls that use their hearing to locate the presenter in a show, and Hudson has been quite bewildered by it. Gradually through training sessions he has learned to ‘ignore the voices’ and watch for where I go and where I place the all-important piece of food! Today he left the gates a little flustered but pulled himself together and flew really well for me. He hardly hesitated flying from one perch to another and even anticipated my destination and headed over to the high perch as I stepped up to it one time. As I have never flown a Great Horned Owl before I haven’t got a good flowing talk put together for Hudson yet. I was a bit distracted by watching him fly too, so my content was a bit lacking. For those of you who have followed my blog over the months you will know I’ve come a long way since my arrival and my personal fear of these owls with such a formidable reputation. For me to fly Hudson at all is quite an achievement I guess, and I’m quite proud of myself overcoming this personal hurdle. We’ve both come a long way together really. Hudson today showed no aggression during the flying display. He was just nervous about the audience at first but then all business like and flew well. With a few more shows both he and I will become a well-tuned machine I hope!

The other two birds I flew in that show were Prince the Ashy Faced and Tiger the Brown Wood Owl, and Prince was on form as he always is these days – a little star! Tiger on the other hand, well we have a different kind of working relationship. She does her own thing and I have to try to keep up! I lost my train of thought while flying her today – the first time I’ve actually had to stop and say to the audience that I forgot what I was on about since coming to the Scottish Owl Centre! I said it with a laugh though, and everyone laughed along. These things happen and I always prefer to laugh them off rather than get more flustered. These flying displays are supposed to be a fun thing rather than serious and sombre so if I slip up I make a joke out of it. The Train of Thought had left the station today! Tiger had the last laugh though and snatched her last reward piece of food from my hand and flew off at the end of the show. Fair play Tiger, you win this time!

Last item in tonight’s blog; our American Barn Owlet has had quite a chilled day but seems happy and settled. At around four weeks old a hard day’s work entails quite a lot of sleeping, eating, sleeping some more etc. Tomorrow may be a bigger day even than today; our little owlet may make it’s Flying Display debut!

Well I think it’s time I got some of that sleeping done myself so I’ll sign off.

Hopefully I’ll be back blogging again tomorrow night so until then, gnite.

 

May the Fourth Be With You

Well it’s been a few days since my last blog entry. For some reason WordPress refused to let me log in to make a new post. The rest of my internet access has been fine, just not WordPress. The problem seems to have mysteriously sorted itself out around the same time I registered with a rival blogging website, funny that!

It’s been the usual blend of ups and downs at the Scottish Owl Centre since I last wrote.

Mixing the bad news and the good news about I’ll start with some good; today we welcomed new Keeper Lauren to the Scottish Owl Centre and she took to her training straight away. Resident ‘nosy parker’ Sarabi the Milky Eagle Owl also took to Lauren straight away too, behaving ‘im-peck-ably’ as Lauren started her bird handling training with our Big Friendly Giant.

We were visited this morning by volunteer Steph with her Barn Owl ‘Spirit’. Steph wishes to train Spirit to fly and was invited to try out our indoor flying display arena as a good safe venue. Spirit is probably the most beautiful female Barn Owl I have ever seen, with a very calm and friendly manner about her too. She sat on our scales quite happily and looked around our Prep room as she waited patiently. We were quite surprised at her weight; about the same as our Tawny Owl Hosking, rather than our two male Barn Owls Lofty and Dylan. Steph’s homework for her visit next week is to lower Spirit’s weight a little to see if this encourages her to fly in the arena. I’m looking forward to seeing how she does.

Some bad news came in the form of the Ural and Northern Hawk Owl nests failing. The Ural was a couple of weeks overdue hatching so I checked on what was going on. If there had been owlets they would have been old enough for the mother to leave for a minute as I peeked in at them, but sadly she was sat in the nest on four unhatched infertile eggs and one broken eggshell. Today I found the female Hawk Owl had come out of the nestbox and was preening on top of her favourite perch. Beneath the perch lay two eggs with holes in them. I retrieved them and saw they were punctured by talons (presumably as she picked them up to take out of the box) and they were also infertile. Leaving it until later in the day, I returned to check the nestbox itself and felt two more eggs. They were quite warm so I left them in there. As she has been spending time out of the box it is pretty safe to assume the eggs were all infertile and she has started to give up on them.

It is something of a setback and hard not to be disheartened for our breeding season with these two failures. I know we would be lucky to have any of the owls breed this year considering the upheaval they have all undergone to be moved to the new site, but all the same we saw so many good signs of courtship from the Hawk Owls we felt sure they would produce young this year. Oh well, it is early days after all.

To balance this news out we have added Mottled Owl and Ashy Faced Owl to our list of birds sitting on eggs. The Ashy Faced are proven breeders – Prince in the display team was from their clutch last year – so our fingers are once again crossed for owlets this season. We do of course still have two Great Horned Owlets that are doing very well in their nest, and to see them grow each day is just great.

Adding to the good news today we also welcomed another owlet in the form of a four week old American Barn Owl that arrived from a collection in southern England. He or she will be hand reared and trained to be part of our team of owls that perform in flying displays, photo sessions and walkabouts around the centre. We have plans to put on an ‘Owls of the Americas’ themed display and are working on a talk linking three owls from that region already. It’s hard to get an idea of how the owlets will turn out when they are just this age but the fluffy wee thing seems pretty calm and laid back. I’m sure s/he will be a big hit with everyone over the coming weeks, months and years!

Cool Kids

Well I’ve had a day or two off so a day or two without blog writing. Back in this afternoon and other than being a bit nippy for the time of year (come on, it’s nearly May!) the sun was shining and the centre had good numbers of visitors.

I was pleased to see that the Great Horned Owlets are now getting so big there is at least one visible most of the time. They seem to almost double in size every day at this stage! I’ve never seen owlets from this species before so I’m loving every day of seeing them.

No news is good news, definitely the phrase of the week as far as the other nesting birds go. Our female Ural Owl is still sitting tight on her nest, and the male is calling to her in the afternoons after food has been put in the aviary. They must have one or more owlets, surely? Over the way in the Northern Hawk Owl aviary the male spent most of the day sitting either next to the nest box or on a perch where he could face the box – could he hear owlets/hatching? The fact that both these female owls are still sitting in the nest box is a good sign, but we won’t know for sure that any eggs have hatched for some time yet. If only I had the Great Grey Owl’s super hearing I could hear if there are owlets in these boxes!

In the last few days we have added more owls to the breeders board; Southern White Faced Owl, Mottled Owl, and hopefully tomorrow the Ashy Faced Owl.

I doubt our Siberian Eagle Owls will breed this year given that the female is going through a moult at the moment. Today I found one of her primary feathers from her left wing – it’s huge! I have in my collection the same feather from a Eurasian Eagle Owl, a Turkmenian Eagle Owl and a Red Kite, and this Siberian’s feather is the biggest of the lot! She’s a very impressive bird!

Today’s flying displays that I took part in were not my best, nor did the birds perform that great either, but everyone has an ‘off day’ every now and then. Sarabi had a bad encounter with wheelchairs in the morning, and seeing another in the afternoon show just put her in a stubborn mood. She was still lovely for the photo sessions, just not inclined to fly today. Hudson the Great Horned managed two short flights and one long one today. Not great by flying display standards but still a milestone; his first flights with an audience and the mic system switched on, so two distractions to put him off. Luckily Prince the Ashy Faced and Lofty the Barn Owl put in good performances, Lofty being particularly aerobatic showing off his hover and pounce technique!

Before my days off we had our first school visit here to the Scottish Owl Centre. One of the local schools – Polkemmet Primary School – came to see the centre. There were maybe 40 to 50 children I think, and they enjoyed their ‘Walk to the North Pole’ guided tour followed by a flying display. There were other visitors in that day too and they were invited to join the tour if they wished, then see the flying display in the indoor arena. The owls put on a good show for the children – I could hear their gasps, laughs and squeals from through the wall as Broo the Eurasian Eagle Owl swooped over their heads. I prepared Lofty for his turn as Hosking the Tawny Owl whizzed around the arena before returning through his little door in the wall to his aviary. Lofty was in a good mood and really showed off for the kids. He is stunning as he is so pale underneath and a rich honey colour on his back, and he flies around the arena quite happy to do his own thing while I talk, then comes over when I offer food. As he will fly to the glove I can go and stand behind – or within! – the audience and bring him over to fly right over their heads or land right next to them. I love seeing the reactions of the audiences as our owls do this, and the school children really enjoyed it. I rounded the display off with a ‘question time’ and was amazed and pleased with all of the things the children asked. There were so many questions I had to stop myself from getting carried away, I could have kept on going all day with a crowd as enthusiastic as that! Well that couldn’t happen of course, and I suggested that the children send us questions through the school or ask next time they visit, maybe with their families.

I really enjoyed this flying demonstration as it was quite different from anything I’d done before – so much fun! We hope to have a lot of schools visit us this year. If you live in the area, maybe you are a teacher or know a teacher, or have children at a local school – get in touch and arrange a visit!

Anyhow I think I’d better log off and get some sleep, it will be a busy day tomorrow!

Gnite!