YELLOW

Quiet day just me and the kitties until I went to Slimming Group. Neil has a 12 hour shift today - 9.30am till 9.30pm. After work he is going to stay at his girlfriends - she is off back to Ireland tomorrow.

Weight loss this week - one pound. Not much but it did enable me to reach a total weight loss of 2 Stone. So I got another certificate --- which I WAS going to blip until something happened on the way home from Slimming Club.

I was walking along the road and was quite near home when I saw a bird of prey flapping it's wings. As I got closer I could see that it was sitting on a lady's arm. I stopped and asked her about it. It's a Harris's Hawk. It belongs to her son - but she mostly looks after it. They got it from a local adventure park which decided that it wasn't going to have birds of prey any more. The lady's son had been going to this place for years and always handled this same bird. So when they heard that the birds were going to be sent to different birds of prey centres across the world they asked if they could take this one. This lady had to go to the centre every week for months to learn how to take care of it and she has had a wonderful aviary built in their garden. I was taken into the garden to see the aviary. It has a little room attached where they keep the gauntlets and a freezer full of rats, quail, chicks which they defrost as and when it needs feeding. It was fascinating to hear about the hawk - its certainly a beautiful creature. She said I could pop round anytime if I want. How kind. Why did she have it in the street - well she was getting it used to the noise of the traffic so that it won't be afraid when the time comes to let it fly around. I was so pleased that I had my little camera with me and that she agreed to let me take a photo. By the way the hawks name is Yellow.