Family get prickly over impending house move

THE Bank Holiday day is finished and although the weather was looking not the best, it turned out okay here at the owl centre – dry and bright with a bit of a chill in the air – not August Bank Holiday sunshine, but fine for us.

The chickens also prove not so helpful gardeners

We had a good number of visitors, in fact across the school summer holidays visitor numbers were good, which was encouraging after so many months of being closed. We are, of course, still well down on normal numbers, but it’s a start.

The meerkats helping with some roof maintenance

Now that the children are heading back to school this would be a busy time for us with school visits – school groups come to us or we go out to schools, but that is unlikely to happen this year, in fact we expect it will be into next year when school visits start to hopefully get back to normal.

Although we are not busy with schools it of course does not mean we aren’t busy – there is always lots to do and in the autumn we start on our maintenance and new projects. This year we have some rather big projects.

Moving the porcupines to a temporarily enclosure is a difficult job

Our meerkat and porcupine indoor housing needs a complete rebuild, which is a big job, not least because it means moving our rather grumpy and rather prickly porcupine family.

We are also doing lots of planting around the centre and our grounds have looked lovely this year.

The grounds looking lovely

We want the flowers and colours to continue into autumn and then burst into life in spring, so bulbs galore are currently being planted, but you just have to make sure a “helpful” chicken doesn’t dig them up after you have gone.

Go to www.kirkleathamowlcentre.co.uk