Ivan in his best suit!

We first visited the park in 1989. We had found a tourist information brochure with 1001 places to visit in the south of England. Inside was a very small photo of a snowy owl at the Hawk Conservancy, Weyhill, Hampshire. We lived in London and were both working but tried to have at least one day to go out and about, usually on a Sunday.

So we turned up at the Hawk Conservancy one Sunday, listened to Reg’s talks and watched all the shows (there were four in those days). We started to come down quite a lot and decided to become members. Over the next eleven years we often stayed over at B&Bs and helped out at the park, cleaning aviaries, working in the coffee shop, or in the gift shop with Phil Gifford, helping with holding birds at the end of displays, gardening or anything else that was needed. Ivan eventually started to work with the Harris’ Hawks.

Brenda with Cheyenne, aged six weeks

Meantime I had got to know Hilary Smith and had struck up a friendship that grew over the years, and started to work with her, helping to prepare food for the baby birds she was rearing. This was very time consuming work. In those days most of the babies ended up in Hilary’s bathroom. We would sit in there chatting and putting the world to rights.

When Ivan retired we decided to move to be near the park, since the journey to and from outer London where we were living had become longer and harder as the years progressed, with bank holidays being worst (up to three hours each way). I continued helping Hilary, taking the young birds out for the public to see, the first being Cheyenne the bald eagle. Then there were two barn owls, two black kites, two black vultures and an Egyptian vulture, as well as a kestrel. I also now had more time to do other jobs on the park such as gardening and cleaning aviaries. Ivan helped Clive with the Harris’ Hawks, particularly with Phoebe, who is still on the flying team today.

Brenda and Tolkein June 06

There was also a release programme for buzzards and Ivan assisted on the tractor rides, taking visitors round to the buzzards’ release site and putting food out for them. He has also helped in training Mace the red backed hawk (who he named Mace because of her colour, since she joined the team during the year when our theme was herbs and spices).

Caviar the Egyptian vulture with one of the black vultures

I started helping out in the hospital once it was built and functioning. One patient who came in was a little owl with a head injury that needed a lot of attention and became imprinted, so could not be re-released. He was eventually named Achilles and learned his hunting skills running round the hospital floor catching moths! Mike Riley was responsible for training Achilles and you can often see him performing at the 3.30 Woodland Owls flying displays. Then there was Tolkien the milky eagle owl, who was great fun.

We still help out regularly, especially doing gardening jobs, and on photographic and experience days, and a special events such as members’ evenings (see photo of Ivan at a summer pageant!). One of my regular jobs, which I’ve worked out I have been doing for the past twelve years, has been a bit of flower arranging, in the shape of Madeleine’s ‘African savannah bush’. That’s an awful lot of laurel!