My name’s Kath Clay and I’ve been volunteering at the Trust since the beginning of the summer holidays last year. What started off as a 2-week volunteering period to keep me entertained during the summer, has ended up with me working at the Trust several days a week since then and they just haven’t been able to get rid of me!

Kath feeding Cavelli the Milky Eagle owl chick in the hospital

What I love about working at the Trust is that no two days are ever the same. Whether that’s because I’ve been assigned to get amongst the spiders and cobwebs and clean out the mouse farm, a block of aviaries mainly used for storage, or I’ve gone over the hill to help release the eagles. (I’ll never forget the day I went ‘over’ with Jane; we got the Land Rover stuck in the mud and Cheyenne flew off so we had to leg it across the A303 to try and find her!) Or maybe I get asked to fill Othello’s water bowl, but can’t manage to fill it in time on my own for the 2 o’clock display, which results in all the falconers rushing to carry buckets of water up to the meadow.

Applying the terracotta ginger to the patio walls

Or maybe I decide to spend the day helping Ash and Julianne tidy and repaint the wall around the patio by the Coffee shop; (at this point I’ll remind anyone who was at the Trust that day that it is not orange but Terracotta Ginger!) Also, I have to mention that the amount of times Clive has seen me rushing past his membership hut because I’ve forgotten to turn the hose off in the Big Vulture aviary, and fearing that I’ve flooded the whole lower section of the park, are too many to count!

Now that I’m a regular volunteer at the park, as it were, I get to be involved a lot more in displays, which I love. So that ranges in a variety of jobs from doing holding birds after displays, to being a music maestro at the Valleys of the Eagles display, to working on the hill with the Vultures during the 12 o’clock demo.

I absolutely love working at the Trust and I’m looking forward to helping out more later in the year with the Owls by Moonlight evenings and on experience days as well. I love the people and all the birds to pieces and wouldn’t swap a day at the Hawk Conservancy for anything in the world!