Christmas Raffle

Our 2009 Christmas Raffle was a success. Lots of our customers supported it in all three shops, Bideford, Barnstaple and Torrington. We had between 20 and 30 prizes displayed in the windows of each shop and the winners from these three draws went in to another draw to win a watercolour ‘The Salmon Netsmen’ donated by our local naturalist Trevor Beer.

The winner of this beautiful picture was Mrs Lucille Brock from Westward Ho! She had had her eye on the painting at the start of the raffle and already pictured in her mind where it would hang on her wall! She was delighted that she had won it and said it cheered her up immensely. Well done Lucille.

The total raised for the raffle in all three shops was £296.30.  Thank you to everyone who supported us and congratulations to all the winners of the other prizes.

Owls in Trouble

It is not only us that are suffering in this freezing weather, the birds are finding it hard to get hold of food in the wild. Smaller birds flock to our gardens hoping we have put out food for them. We have several birds flocking to our garden daily. These include 6 pairs of bullfinch, 5 robins, four male and two female blackbirds, chaffinch, greenfinch, tits, two thrushes and recently during the last few days a redwing, as well as four squirrels.

Unfortunately, owls are suffering too. Over the last week we have had two owls in, one didn’t make it. He was a tawny owl that was found in the road at Dolton by a lady one night. She took it home and put it in a box and telephoned us the next morning to see if we could take it. When she found it the owl was freezing cold and the first thing we did was to put it in a cage under our stairs next to the boiler. When owls are in shock they drop body temperature very quickly and they could die.

Ollie, which is what we called him, didn’t seem to be injured and due to the heavy snow that morning it was impossible to get him to the vets. Under the stairs he seemed to perk up once he got warmer and we tried to coax him to eat a little meat without much success. We had more snow the next day and that night he called out ‘twit twoo’, to us that was a good indication that he was on the mend. The next day the roads were clear so Stuart drove off to Dolton with Ollie. Owls are very territorial so it was important to release him back where he was found. Stuart gently lifted him out of the cage and he flew off and landed in the field. After having a good look around he flew off again into the woods, hopefully to continue his life.

Ollie was a success story, but the barn owl that we collected from Barnstaple was not. Stuart had a telephone call on Sunday night about a barn owl someone had found in their wood pile. It wasn’t very good and could have been there for some time. Stuart met the farmer at Roundswell service station because of the state of the side roads. Stuart brought it straight home, it was very, very cold and listless. Within a couple of minutes it had died. On further examination it looked like it had been hit by something as there was trauma to its body. Also, it was very thin and had probably been suffering for days, getting colder and colder. It is very sad when a beautiful bird like this dies, we cannot help but admire them. 

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February 2010

Winter 2009

August 2009

May 2009

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