The Accipiter - Online magazine from The Hawk Conservancy Trust

December 2005

Our last Owls by Torchlight was held at the end of October, the day before we closed to the public for the winter, and it had a Halloween theme to it. The evening was fortuitously dry and mild, and many guests came suitably attired for the event. Volunteers Sylvie and Julianne Arthur carved pumpkins into fabulous pictures and placed them around the grounds, to help light the way for the groups of guests being guided round the aviaries to see the nocturnal birds in action. Members of staff, plus a few volunteers, and their children, hid behind trees and bushes dressed as ghosts, ghouls and witches to jump out at the poor unsuspecting visitors. And just after the guests had eaten a big meal too.

An audible, collective sigh of relief can always be heard coming from the staff (and from the birds!) during the first week that the park is closed. Eight and a half months of open season with everyone being ‘on show’ can be quite stressful and all are ready for a change of pace by the time November arrives. However although the atmosphere is relaxed, it is also the time when all the heavy maintenance work takes place and so it is often physically a very demanding time of year for staff.

This year the one of the first jobs was to move all the tools, gardening equipment, paints etc. out of the area behind the office and turn the two redundant stables next to the lower flying ground into a workshop and storage area for them. A tree surgeon comes to the park once a year to prune and thin out all the excess growth. All the aviaries are being re-perched this year, so the branches and trunks that had been felled needed to be sorted through to choose a variety of lengths, shapes and thicknesses suitable for the various birds. The tree surgeon brings his bark chipping machine and, as he was only with us for a few days at the beginning of November, staff and volunteers alike were kept busy for those days (often in pouring rain) collecting and feeding the rest into the beast, to be recycled for mulch on flower beds etc. Some serious aviary refurbishment has now started around the park. The first Working Day for members was held on Saturday 19 November, and much was achieved by around 70 volunteers, with 20 tons of new gravel being moved and dozens of railway sleepers positioned in the redesigned eagle, falcon and Harris Hawk mews.

That is some of what has been going on just during the first few weeks of the closed season; much further work will be completed over the coming months.

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