The ‘open’ season finished on a high note with our two Halloween-style Owls By Torchlight evenings on the last weekend of October, well attended and with a proliferation this year of willing ghosts, ghouls and other scary beings.

As soon as November arrived, the weather turned colder and the park suddenly started looking more autumnal. So far this month most of the ‘top’ section of the park – Clive’s section – has been dismantled ready for new aviaries to be built. (This means that Clive currently has the luxury of hardly any birds to feed, but we think payback time will come next year when he will need his own mower and strimmer to cope with all the grass in his new enclosures.) The butterfly garden and pond area adjacent to this section is also being prepared to be transformed into a permanent new flying arena, which was given a few test runs during the last weeks of October, and looks like being a great venue for flying some of our woodland species.

Every year during the closed season, we hold members’ working days on the park, and on Saturday 18th November around 100 members turned up for the first one this year, working very hard and earning their fish and chip lunch. The maintenance area was given a thorough tidy up, all the rubbish from the aviaries that have been pulled down was removed and a large number of telegraph poles to be used for building the new enclosures were placed in the spaces in readiness. The barrier along the edge of the lower flying ground was replaced, the playground area was given a coat of paint, and some leaf raking was carried out. As usual our grateful thanks go to all those who came along and worked so hard to make a huge difference to the park, and to ease the workload on the regular staff and volunteers during the winter.

Some new young birds have recently arrived and are in training ready for next year, one for each member of the falconry staff. Five young Harris’ Hawks are being trained by Cedric, Clive, Jane, Kym and Mike, which Clive has written about in his On the Park article this month, plus two new Black Kites being trained by James and Sam, and a Lanner Falcon being trained by Gary. All these will be either displaying or used for experience days next season.

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