Sunday, December 30, 2007

Cute cubs.

Well as you can probably imagine it's been a rather quiet few days here; everything ticking over nicely but not a lot of action apart that is, from our cubs. They were 4 weeks and 2 days old on Christmas Day and when I checked them on Christmas morning I noticed that one of them had just begun to open his or her eyes. They were just tiny slits with a hint of black behind them but definitely opening! By Friday 28th December three of the cubs had both eyes open, not quite fully round yet but nicely widening slits. Unfortunately the smallest cub, I've mentioned her before, had only just started to open her right eye - a very odd sight. By this morning (Sunday 30th) she had both eyes open but they are still just narrow slits compared to those of her brothers and sisters.

This may or not be significant; it's clear that she is developing at the slowest rate and is around 5 days or so behind her siblings. At the moment all of the cubs suckle from Zephyr and none of them can move around independently. However, all this will change in the next week and if this small cub is pushed to one side at suckling times by her larger and better developed brothers and sisters and always last at feeds when they begin to wean onto solids then she will be in trouble. The question is will Zephyr recognize what is happening and make sure she gets her share or will she leave her to her fate?

Only time will tell but you can be sure that we will intervene if we have to and give her the best possible chance of survival.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Dear Skippy....

Dear Skippy,

It's so nice to hear from our marsupial friends in Australia. I've asked around the wallabies here and one of the older ones (well, a very, very, old one indeed) seems to remember you from his days back in Oz and he reckons he recognized you on your visit here earlier this year!

Because of his great age his memory isn't that great but he describes Skippy as a bespectacled, motorcycle (was it a Moto Gucci?) loving biped with greying hair. Is that you? Do you still eat the banana skin rather than the banana? He's really pleased that your film career went so well but why haven't we seen you on the silver screen for so long?
If it's not too much trouble he asked me if you could provide him with a pawprinted photograph of yourself "in character". If you're standing next to Kylie at the time, so much the better.

Regarding your question about how they keep warm, the British Otters love the cold; the other day when there was a thick covering of ice on their ponds they all had great fun skating on it, breaking it and eating it. They let if refreeze and then did it all again a couple of hours later. The superb insulation qualities of their coat - two layers of fur sandwiching a layer of air - keep them warm as long as they keep it in good condition and aerated. I imagine its' like wearing a waterproof duvet! I think their feet and noses may be susceptible to the cold but the rest of them certainly isn't.

Some of the Asian Short Clawed Otters don't seem to mind the cold that much either; Sonny and Thor play on the ice quite readily in a similar way to their British cousins but the family stay in when it's cold and keep warm in their holt with their new cubs. Last week when we opened up their holt to check on things there was a blast of warm air from their bedding; wonderful, no wonder they didn't want to come out!

We cleared out the crocs from our ponds about 2.25 million years ago and haven't had any recent difficulties with them, not as far as I can remember anyway.

However, I will check our daily record sheets to be sure that I haven't forgotten anything but it may take me a little while - 2.25 million years times 365 days a year works out at quite a lot of daily records. . . . . . . .

On a serious note, the cubs are doing fine, deer look happy and the birds are a lot more comfotable now that the recent cold snap is over.

Hope you all have great Christmas, John.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Very briefly....

Nice to hear from you Clara, how is everyone?

We saw all four of the cubs yesterday, three growing nicely and one a little smaller than the others but not significantly so. Their coats are still darkening and their eyes are still tight shut, they should open around Christmas Day. Zephyr is looking very well and so are the rest of the family despite the cold. Two of their older siblings, Tilly and Tiny, are especially attentive and seem to be giving their mum a good deal of support. This includes guard duty, but just because they can't leave the babies doesn't mean that they go hungry; no, their selfless parents, brother and sister bring food to them, usually before feeding themselves! A very caring sharing family. On occasion we have even seen them taking mouthfulls of water to each other and allowing a more senior member of the family to drink from their mouths.

Everyone else is fine and spending most of the time keeping themselves warm apart from Tino and Tamarisk who can't wait for their pond to freeze over so that they can smash the ice all over again- a game they don't ever tire of. Can't say I fancy the ice cold dip that they get when they suceed though.

Karulah, one of our Bengal Eagle Owls, is a very tame bird indeed. She was hatched in February 2007 and reared by her parents with four other owlets until she was four weeks old then one day when we went to check on their health she was the only one remaining. She was too small to have eaten all of her nest mates and we suspect one of her parents was the culprit. We took her home and hand reared her (see pictures). Our children, experienced owl rearers, took their fair share of feeding duties and still handle her regularly. One of their favourite games (before she could fly properly) was to come in from school, take off their socks and throw them across the floor for the owl to practice her pouncing technique! When she tired of that she game she would jump into the nearest lap, stick her head between your thighs and her bum in the air and have 40 winks! Not the behaviour you'd usually expect of a top predator.

Karulah underwent flying training and we free flew her for a couple of months until she developed some bad habits (like not coming down from rooftops and roosting in trees that were out of bounds). We stopped free flying her and she had about 2 months rest and we have begun to train her (from scratch) again. Hopefully she will have forgotten her bad behaviour and will do as she is told, time will tell.

By the way, the Bengal Eagle Owl hen has not returned to her eggs.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Beautiful days

Hi Sophie, great to hear from you, but no cakes for you to test today!

Hello again everyone, great weather down here, but like everywhere else in the U.K. this week, very cold. We've even taken pity on the chickens, pheasants and peacocks and opened the doors of the barn so that they can have a more sheltered roost, although many of them have snubbed our invitation and continue to fly into the trees at night.

The Fallow Deer, most of which have thick, dark coats at this time of year, look stunning against the white of the frost. The adults have been coming down to be hand fed during the day but the five fawns are still a little stand offish.....until the last couple of days when the young pricket (6 months old) has drummed up the courage to approach the keepers and not run off when fruit is offered; not quite hand feeding yet but his confidence is obviously growing.

The Wallabies, also a bit peckish apparently, have allowed us to get very close to them while we work in the woods. Some of them even seem to be waiting for the banana skins we take for them after our lunch. Seems like a good relationship as they don't seem that interested in the actual bananas.

The cold weather has probably claimed some casualties in the form of the Bengal Eagle Owl eggs. The hen bird has been spending more and more time away from the nest over the last few days and we don't think she will continue to sit; it's just too cold and probably too early. We have increased her food supply to see if it makes any difference but we aren't optimistic.

The Family gave us a little cause for concern by not eating their evening meals last week but it may be that they chose warmth over food as all the adults seem healthy; coats shining glossily in the sunshine as they go about tidying up their holt (again) and chasing away the occasional passing peacock. We haven't seen the cubs for three days (they were 3 weeks old yesterday) because the straw in the holt has been transformed into a dome shape about the size of an upturned bucket. The cubs are probably in the middle of it keeping warm, it's a method we've seem otters use before so we won't intrude unless we think it's really necessary. Zephyr is back to being a picture of health, if it wasn't for the flecks of grey in her coat you'd never guess she was 12 years old last Monday!

William continues to demolish our new pen. A large hole has been excavated by one of the ponds and he can almost disappear completely into it. He's been very playful with Hilda and she continues to respond kindly to him. He still tries to steal her food but she's now more confident and is sticking up for herself - good girl!

We continue to clear the woods and have marked out the shape of the new otter pen (after a couple of trial runs). The stakes will start going in this week if it stays dry.

Our new aviary has now got its' wind proofing in one corner and we continue to work on it whenever time allows; we might even finish it before we open at this rate. Where did I put those perches......?


Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Brrrrr!

Well, what a change. A weekend of rain, gales and hail to beautiful blue skies, wall to wall sunshine and no wind; I know which I prefer!

Although the heavy rain did cause us to flood quite a bit no major damage has been done and no big trees were blown down so after a little cleaning up on Monday we're set to cut a hole in the fencing, build a bridge and continue clearing a copse by the marsh lake of dead wood.

Once the copse is clear and some drainage work has been done we intend to build a new otter pen here. Once it's built we can move some of the otters out of their older pens and refurbish them. We've decided to leave a tree for William and Tino to climb. That's right, climb! These two British Otters are both expert climbers and if you can't see them on the ground or in the water look up and they'll be looking down on you from a convenient limb.

The family continue to do well and the cubs look good, though one is still smaller than the other three. Zephyr looked a little off colour today, and they didn't eat all the supper last night-a very unusual event so we'll be keeping a close eye on them .

William and Hilda (a pair of British Otters) are at last playing, cavorting and sleeping together. They're obviously settling in well together and enjoying each other's company. One victim of this though has been the waterworks in their enclosure; William (the show off) has broken the waterfall, blocked the drains and is digging holes everywhere. Lets hope he doesn't cause too much damage.

The wallabies all look well and don't seem to mind us working by the Marsh Lake too much as long as they get the odd banana skin. We have seen the Muscovy and Shelducks beginning to pair off and practice their courtship dances, very elaborate for the mature birds and a bit clumsy for the younger ones, still, with practice they'll all make Tamar Come Dancing. Lets hope it stays dry for a couple of days.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Bengal Eagle Owls on eggs!

Well, what an awful day, raining stair rods, gales and heavy hail. It's rather quiet when we open up on days like this as most of the animals and birds are in their holts, boxes or shelters keeping warm and dry; can't blame them really can you?

A quick chat and the four of us (keepers that is) get on with the day; the three priorities at this time of day are feeding and checking the animals, checking the fencing and grounds for overnight damage due to the weather and getting on top of our water. We have a beautiful site with its' own spring fed stream and numerous other springs but that can be a problem on mornings like today; water everywhere and if we don't control the early signs of flooding we'll be in trouble later.

During the checks we see that the four Asian Short Clawed cubs are all dry and snug in the holt. One is clearly smaller than the rest but they are all obviously putting on weight. The other thing we notice is that they are already changing colour from the clean, silver grey fur they were born with to a darker, slightly dirtier looking coat that they will wear for the next couple of weeks. Their eyes are still tight shut but they do squeak from time to time and are being well cared for by Zephyr and the rest of the gang. Have Tilly and Tiny been trying to suckle their younger brothers and sisters? Both have sore looking teats, we'll have to keep an eye on that as neither of them can make any milk for the cubs until they've had cubs of their own. The family remove most of their bedding during the morning which is their way to let us know they want to be cleaned out. We duly take away the dirty bedding they've left on their balcony and replace with fresh straw which is quickly stowed away in an impressive team effort by everyone except Zephyr, who was presumably organising things inside, out of our sight.

William and Hilda, a pair of British Otters, come out together and play for half an hour or so during the morning. A good sign, we'd like them to breed but they haven't been taking much notice of one another since they were placed in the same pen three weeks ago.

An hour and a half later we've cleaned, cleared and checked and all is well, floodwater receding and no big trees came down last night which means we can get on with more constructive jobs.

Mandy and I check on our pair of Bengal Eagle Owls; they had 7 eggs in their nest 10 days ago and we're curious to see if the female will sit as it's rather early to breed, even for this pair. We get a surprise when we look because now there are 8! Looks like owlets before Christmas if the eggs are fertile.

During the day we near the end of constructing a new aviary and noticed that the ducks were dabbling contendedly on the lawn now that it had stopped raining. What a pretty sight. Then reality hits home, within an hour the lawn was gone and had been replaced by a muddy bog occupied by 20 or so very contented looking ducks. Who's idea was it to buy in ducks? Oh well, at least they're happy....

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Our first blog

About 20 minutes ago my wife asked me how you set up a blog, and a few minutes later here we are!

Perhaps I should introduce us and supply a little background.... my wife Mandy and I saw the Centre was for sale in February 2006, we visited, fell in love with the animals and location, and by the end of April we had bought it! A bit of a change for an ex-policeman and a wife more used to teaching in a nursery school, but there you go, sometimes you've just got to have a change of scenery (in our case from Surrey to Cornwall via a year on a farm in Dorset).

Some of you may have known the Centre as the Cornwall branch of the Otter Trust. We don't intend to make too many changes, the place has a beautifully peaceful atmosphere that we don't want to lose, but it does need some updating which we have already started, more about that some other time, I'm sure you'd rather hear about our animals.

They range from the secretive (Muntjac Deer), to "in your face" (most of our British Otters but particularly Hilda, Tino and Tamarisk) and include a confused Karulah (a Bengal Eagle Owl) who really should be shy but would much rather come and meet everyone and show herself off.

As well as the British Otters we also provide a home for some of their cousins, the Asian Short Clawed Otter. Our "family" consists of dad Raymond, mum Zephyr, 2 year olds Tilly, Tom and Tiny and little Solo, who until last Sunday was the youngster of the group at 1 year old. What happened last Sunday (the 25th November) you ask??? Well Zephyr, at the grand age of 11 years and 11 months (a very respectable age) produced 4 beautiful, tiny silver furred cubs. We are leaving them as much to themselves as we can at the moment so we don't know what sex the cubs are, but they have grown from the size of my middle finger to 4 fat sausages in just over a week so things are looking well although there is one who is noticably smaller than the rest who we are a little concerned about.

The new arrivals have got us hoping that the weather won't be too cold or wet for too long. That, however, doesn't present any problems for Honey, a 6 month old British Otter, who relishes the cold and the wet. She's been very shy until the last week but has started to approach us at feeding and is learning to come to her name. She has just started to argue with her mum, Harriet, and we reckon the cub eats about 60% of all the food we give the pair, greedy little thing! Poor Harriet!

Well, I'd better go and do some feeding before it gets too late. Bye for now.