1st to 9th October - Getting busy at Bird Rescue

Monday 1^st October – Bird rescue

It looks like he's biting, but he's just playing, honest!

Duckling season is well and truly in full swing. There were literally hundreds at Bird Rescue today. Having taken numerous calls at the SPCA about this issue, it seems that ducklings are especially prone here to falling through drain covers and needing to be rescued! The centre has put an appeal out for foster homes as we they could really do with making some space.

I took a well-deserved break from cleaning to keep Zambesi the rainbow lorikeet entertained whilst trying to prevent him from stealing chocolate biscuits. 

The little blue penguin is still here having been making little progress. A return trip to the vets to find out why he was failing to put any weight on revealed he had an infection, so now that he’s on antibiotics hopefully he will start recovering.

Tuesday 2^nd October

Time to get a new exciting gym program to keep me motivated, after which I had a lovely afternoon sitting reading in the sunny garden.

Ari checks some emails

Thursday 4^th to Sunday 7^th October – Working at the SPCA contact centre

A four-day week for me this week. It’s getting really busy at the contact centre. The SPCA here is transitioning into a national body rather than segregated branches and this includes the contact centre starting to take calls for more and more of the country. It’s getting so busy we need extra paws to come in and help us.

'Don't interrupt me when I'm working....'

This chap was the founder of the first SPCA in New Zealand in 1882

Weekends are surprisingly quiet compared to weekdays. I would have thought that people would be out and about on their weekends, seeing more animals and therefore keeping us busy, but it seems to be opposite to this.  I’m not complaining – we hardly have time to stop at all during the week so it’s nice for the pace to slow down a little at weekends. I have been warned of the terror that awaits us in the height of summer!

All in all, I feel like I’m starting to get to grips with the system now and have moments of enjoying the job, interspersed with getting frustrated at the members of the community who seem to think that animals are disposable items that charities should just take in when they’ve tired of them! Remember Ruth, not all people are idiots, it just seems that way some days!

.... And I was the sober one!

We had one sociable evening over the weekend, a visit to Marcin and Ela’s place for, wait for it, a BBQ (it’s been literally days since our last – I can sense a brilliant theme emerging). As designated driver I was sober to observe the extent of the drunkenness. It involved cheesy dancing to The Eagles under disco lights, a chair being broken and people stumbling over plant pots. It got messy. There were several sore heads on Sunday morning, but thankfully not mine!

Monday 8^th October

My shift at Bird rescue had been swapped to Tuesday this week, so I had a bonus Monday off to recover from my working weekend. Time for some more sundeck relaxation.

I also achieved some good admin tasks this afternoon – look at these amazing tree pro-formas I created in relation to the monitoring at Waitawa.

I think this one looks best!

A little more professional that the hand-drawn mess that I have been working with so far! The idea is that I can draw the location of the nests and birds I see straight on there. Even more importantly I spent a few hours scouring the internet to create an awesome itinerary for mine and Becky’s upcoming girls’ tour of New Zealand! No spoilers, but it’s looking amazing. Though I am worried that I’m trying to cram too much in. We need some downtime too….

Tuesday 9^th October – Bird Rescue

I couldn’t go without mentioning the amazing folks at Manakau heads lighthouse who have stepped up to foster the majority of the ducklings from Bird Rescue. If I’d have known that they were coming in today I probably wouldn’t have worked so swiftly to clean all of the duck crates that were subsequently emptied and needed cleaning for a second time. But still, amazing work. We’ll have to re-visit the lighthouse soon and I can say that I probably cleaned up the poop of many of the ducks there!