Well it’s May already and I don’t know where the last few weeks have gone we’ve been so busy.
Firstly Carmen; everything is fine with her, the cubs and Tino. The cubs are now just over ten weeks old and are getting to be reasonably good swimmers. We saw one of their first lessons about 10 days ago and it went something like this: Carmen emerged from the holt with one cub and they made their way to the waters edge. Carmen slipped gently into the water but the cub wouldn’t follow. She called quietly to it, rolled onto her side and gently tried to encourage it into the water but the cub wouldn’t budge. Time for a change of tack and Carmen decided to grab the cub by its ear and drag it into the water. The cub panicked and was splashing a lot with its front paws in a poor effort at a doggy paddle and headed straight back to the bank. Carmen positioned herself between the cub and the bank and each time it got close she dragged it back into deeper water. After about 2 minutes the cub was exhausted and its coat was waterlogged; it gave up and began to sink into the water. But ever attentive mum slipped under the water and emerged with the cub clinging to her back. She swam around like this for a minute and then took her baby to the bank where the poor bedraggled little thing made for the holt. This was then repeated with the second cub.
Thankfully since then things have improved and we see Carmen swimming with one cub several times a day but we haven’t yet seen her with both cubs in the water at the same time. Tino is taking all this in his stride. He doesn’t take part in any swimming lessons as far as we know but we have seen him playing with his cubs in a very gentle and caring way. Mind you, with Carmen around he wouldn’t do anything else would he?
It’s good news all round at the moment with our birds of prey. Firstly the Little Owls and the Kestrels. Both are fairly new additions to the park and have obviously decided they like it here, as both pairs of birds have laid eggs in the last couple weeks. The Little Owl was the first to lay, but seemed to be a bit confused about what she should do once she had laid an egg. She laid her egg in one box and then started sitting in another box. We decided to help her out and moved the egg underneath her, but she pushed it in front of her and refused point blank to sit on it, so we took the egg out and have put it in the incubator to see what will become of it. It may be that she’s very intelligent and knows the egg won’t hatch or that there is something wrong with it, so has decided not to waste any energy sitting. We will just have to wait and see. Since the first egg she has laid a second and for the moment we are leaving it with her to see if she will look after it herself.
The Kestrels have also laid two eggs. We went and fed them yesterday and the female hadn’t been out flying around as she usually is in the day, so we had a check around the aviary to make sure she was okay and she was sitting on two bright orange eggs. She seems to know what she is doing and has been getting off the nest to get some food and then straight back on it, so hopefully we will have some new chicks in the next few weeks.
Along with the Little owls and Kestrels a couple of our longer term residents have also started laying eggs, the Bengal Eagle Owls and the Snowy Owls.
The Snowy Owls have had bad luck with their chick rearing in the past, the main reason being that the female seems to find her offspring very tasty! Last year they had three eggs and sure enough mum ate all three. We have now learnt from our mistakes and formed a plan of action for them. Basically, when the first egg hatches we are going to try and rear it ourselves and see if the Snowy Owl will rear any that are left. That way hopefully we will have some survivors. So far this year she has laid five eggs, the first two ended up in a puddle after some heavy rain and she decided to leave them, so we have put the eggs into our incubator,
(but we’re not very hopeful), then the third egg she laid in a scrape right at the front of her aviary, at the most downhill point she could get, so we took it away for fear of another drowned scrape. She has now laid two more eggs at the highest point in her aviary and is sitting on them. We are bit more hopeful about these and it would seem that they are looking after them very well, as last night we saw for the first time the male sitting on the nest whilst the female got off to get some food. Fingers crossed!
Lastly we have the Bengal Eagle Owls who are sitting on two eggs, she has laid eggs in the winter but then leaves them and they go cold. So far she has been sitting on these for a week or two now, so hopefully something will happen here as well.
All of our animals seem to be having a baby boomer of a year, as well as the owls, we have lots of ducklings at the moment. Most of our eggs in the incubator have hatched this year. We let six of our bigger ducklings out into the rest of the park last week, they seem to have found their way round fairly well but still like the company of the other ducklings, as they tend to hang around their old duck run in the mornings and evenings. We have another twelve ducklings inside that are still a bit too small to go outside and a few eggs left to hatch in the incubator.
Outside we have a Muscovy duck with thirteen ducklings, they don’t all appear to be hers, we think she has some Mallards and Aylesburys as well and was obviously so good at sitting on the nest, the other ducks have decided to let her be super mum and look after all of them.
Some of our geese seem to be getting into the spirit of things as well. Our Barnacle geese are sitting on the island and for the last couple of years have had two successful clutches.
Unfortunately our Chinese Fawn Goose has decided to copy the Barnacle Geese and would like some babies of her own. She made a beautiful nest and sat for a very long time, so we thought something exciting would happen. However, as time went on and nothing was happening we decided to go and have a look ourselves. We found one egg, which had been there so long and it was rotten, so we threw that one away and hoped she would resume normal life, as she has been so good, she hadn’t been coming off her nest for any food or anything. However, she still persists in sitting on her nest, but now gets off every morning and evening for food. Whether or not she has laid any more eggs we don’t know, but time will tell.
As well as birds we have seen some young Muntjac deer running around. We have one that looks a few months old and another one that is living with mum and dad behind that barn that looks only a few weeks old, as it still has all of its spots.
Dasher our hand reared Muntjac fawn has been let out into the park, after he had a run in with his aviary and received a couple of small cuts. We then decided to let him run around the rest of the park and would try calling him for his milk in the mornings and evenings. It does work, he now tends to have his milk once a day but as soon as he hears the word milk he appears right by your side. He seems to be integrating very well with the other deer and has made good friends with the youngest Muntjac that we have seen, as they running around, playing together the other day.
That’s all for now,
