Wednesday 26 August 2009

The most bizarre....you will love this!

Remember Bo Peep? well, as it turns out, Bo is a boy (we think) and since he has grown up, he just hangs out in the garden and hospital a bit like my shadow, usually making a total pest of himself. Everyone knows him, he is a part of the furniture really.

Three days ago, Bo went missing. He just wasn't there in the morning, whereas he usually sits on the roof until I come out and then flies into the hospital with me but there was no sign of him anywhere.

We searched everywhere for him but came to the conclusion that a sparrowhawk must have taken him. Until he went missing, I hadn't realised how much I loved him to be honest so we have been a bit sad to say the least.

This morning, my friend and next door neighbour came round and said she thought there was something down her chimney as her cat was sitting on top of the woodburner, just looking up.
The chimney is sealed at the bottom as the fire is a woodburner and so we had to break the seals and start breaking it open. We looked up with a torch and saw a beak so we knew we were right about there being someone there. My heart leapt when Pam looked in and said she could see a white head! We managed to make a big enough hole for me to put my arm in and grab him......It was Bo!!!! Alive, well and biting me :)

He is now back in the hospital having some breakfast and acting as if nothing has happened...he is such a dope, I think he must have just overbalanced and fallen in...he is that daft, honest. I love that bird :) xxx

Welcome home Bo !!!!!!!

Tuesday 25 August 2009

Still here

Newbies still coming in but more injuries than anything really...oh and baby pigeons, they keep coming until quite late on really.

We have released quite a few recently, including 4 little partridges running around the garden with the rest of the crew. Oh and we took in 10 ex battery hens on Sunday, sweet girls :)

Monday 17 August 2009

Rikster

Forgot to say, the Rikster is fab. he spends his days in his aviary and the pops through the window in the evening and spends his time alternating between preening and kissing us and dive bombing everything in sight.

Georgie has had to go into an outside aviary as he is extremely....shall we say.... "in breeding condition" and wants to mate with everything, humans, cats, dog...he really isn't fussy. The thing of it is though, we tried putting him with Lucy, another barnie and he doesn't know how to do it, just kept beating her up !!!!!

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

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