Sorry Everyone

I really am sorry but we have been so busy, we honestly haven't had the time to do anything other than look after the little critters!

Year to date, we have taken in over 260 of the little blighters, lots of tiny babies and now they have slowed down, we seem to be getting a lot of injuries.

You are going to be even less pleased with me when I tell you what you have missed, we have had all sorts of things, including a Rhea, kingfisher, woodpeckers, baby seagulls, little owl, tawny owls, barn owls.....the list goes on and on.

I haven't even had time to take pics of a lot of them, start at about 7.30- 8.00 each morning and finish around 10-30 pm if we are lucky. Tea time is around 11.00 pm! No problem with obesity here, we have both lost loads of weight. The only fat people around here are the animals.

It's official, we are knackered!

We have had some volunteer help ( thanks loads to Anne, Jacki, Hannah, Chelsea and Kelly ) and we have quite a few more starting soon, looks like the numbers will go up year on year and I am not at all sure we can cope with any more than we have this year. It isn't just the hospital kids either, we have all the outside ones to care for as well and there are a fair few of them I can tell you, but all of the volunteers do a grand job.

We have also had a breakout of Ornithosis, we aren't sure which critter brought it in but we have lost several pigeons and doves to it. We have tried everything but nothing seems to work for it at all. We think we have got rid of it finally but it was a nightmare whilst it was going on, trying to keep everyone isolated from each other and all the equipment sterile.

On top of everything else, the computer that we use for streaming has gone on the wonk and neither of has had time to fiddle with it to see what is wrong.

I have had a few emails recently from you guys asking if everything is ok and it is, nothing to worry about at all, as I say, just very busy.

Loads and loads have been released so far with loads yet to go. We have had to convert all of the safety corridors so that they can double up as release pens!

We started off just taking in a few birds and we are now in the position where we seem to have a fully fledged bird sanctuary up and running....not bad to say most of it is down to our small associtaion with no money! Seriously, I am very proud of what we have all achieved in the last two years, the place is un recognisable.


We have also painted the outside of the house and stencilled it so it looks fab, we needed to get it done before winter, and EB has built a garage with owl boxes in the roof, that looks great too. Garden is looking good and just last week, some lovely people donated a ride on mower so EB has been able to cut all the long grass at the bottom of the garden.

We also managed to buy the life support cabinet we have been after, Brinsea kindly let us have it half price and I stuck it on my credit card. The next week, a lovely lady donated the cost of it to us...thank you Cynthia.

Right, back to baby feeds and meds I guess. I should be able to update a bit more as things finally seem to be slowing down a bit, we only have 18 in the hospital bit...we got up to 40 at one time, most of them being hand fed!

We have one cool dude at the moment, a stone curlew. He / she is a juvenile, part of an RSPB project to increase the numbers. It was found with an injured foot by one of the people on the project. She brought it in and we had big debates as to whether it should be euthanased as the foot had gangrene and need to be amputated. We took the decision to go ahead with the amputation and see what happened. Three weeks later, it is now putting weight on the damaged leg, the stump has healed very well and now just has a small dressing on the end to protect it. As soon as I have free space, she will go into an outside aviary to see if she can fly. If so, she will soon be ready to be released back into the wild in time for migration!

Right, catch you soon peeps,

Owl Momma xxx