him a home! It turned out to be the best happy ending we could ever have imagined. Jake now lives with Veronica’ s other dogs, he goes on caravanning holidays, he dives in her pond, he barks in his sleep, and he steals her sandwiches! The old boy is living the life he always deserved and he is adored. We couldn’ t have dreamed of a better outcome.
Please consider adopting an older dog – they make wonderful companions!
Peregrine goes off-piste!
This summer we admitted a young female Peregrine Falcon that had been found grounded in a garden in Wales.
After a trip to the vets she was transferred to West Hatch Wildlife Centre for further care. Our vet gave her a clinical examination and found she was injury-free, but in poor overall condition. She was moved to one of our intensive care pens and given fluids and small amounts of food on a regular basis. Within a few days she was eating a whole quail a day and gained over 300 grams in weight.
She has been ringed with a light blue colour ring marked‘ JT’ on her left leg and a metal BTO( British Trust for Ornithology) ring on her right leg bearing a unique code for ID and we hope that these will allow us to hear back about her progress from time to time.
Whilst the rehabilitation may have been simple, finding out where she came from was less straightforward. We approached a range of contacts and ended up with four possible sites – but no way to tell which may have been her home. This presented a real problem as returning her to the wrong location could jeopardise her survival, especially if she was not fully flight-fit. We therefore made the decision to work with the Hawk Conservancy Trust to offer her another solution. They took her on and will help her gain fitness to fly and hunt using a process called manning. It won’ t be very long now before she will be released fit and well back into the wild to live out her natural life as a top predator species.
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