I started as a volunteer after 2 weeks’ work experience in April. Tony and I were helping with the Steller’s sea eagle pond, painting it sky blue, and I became hooked on the place instantly.

I now come up on my days off from college and at weekends, no matter what the weather wishes to throw at me. I spent most of my summer helping out with a wide range of jobs, from preparing the food for displays to strimming around the whole park, which I did most days.

Simon manning Mulberry, the new barn owl

One of my favourite jobs is ‘doing the hill’ at the 12 o’clock display, when four American Black Vultures and a Griffon Vulture come flying at you. One day Frodo, the Tawny Eagle, had not returned home after being used on an Activity Day. I then had a Tawny Eagle come flying at me, and got a message on the radio to “keep the vultures away from that eagle”. Luckily he then decided to land on a post nearby.

It’s been great to see all the new birds going through their training this summer and to see how they have all improved and are getting their own routines. My favourite of the new birds is the Gymnogene, Tom Ford, who is just completely different to all the other display birds. I’ve had the pleasure of helping with a few of this year’s youngsters, like the 3 new Black Kites who I helped to feed when they first arrived.

One of my best memories so far is of the day Paul and I went over the hill (to release the bald eagles at the 2pm Valley of the Eagles display). We could hear over the radio that the display wasn’t going very well, and we were quite happy to be away from the chaos. We then radioed Thruxton aerodrome as usual, to ask for permission to release the eagles, but got a reply saying “good afternoon Hawk Conservancy, the air ambulance is on its way out so can you wait 5 minutes”. [The air ambulance’s arrival had nothing to do with the chaos at the park. Ed.]. We finally were able to let the eagles go, though they flew off in different directions and we lost sight of them both. But since they were wearing telemetry, we had both their signals. Then we caught sight of Cheyenne near the park, and Danebury was also on his way, so we were quite relieved that we didn’t have to go searching for them.

I would like to thank all the staff for making me feel welcome and part of a great working environment. I’m looking forward to doing work over the winter and to helping out on activity days.