Well, it’s been quite a while, but I’m still here. My newest handler is working out pretty well, although she doesn’t spend enough time on my blog 
We’ve been doing quite a few programs since January. We went to Homer for the Shorebird Festival in May and it was lovely. The bed and breakfast we stayed at was just right: there was a nice area for me to walk around in the grass and to stretch my wings; I could see the spit and all the other birds flying around. The programs were very nice and were with fellow Ed birds, Ghost (SNOW) and Atremis (GHOW): the two at the high school were so relaxing I tucked up my foot and preened. The program at the Islands and Oceans started off rough because there were these shiny things hanging from the ceiling that kept moving around and flashing, but my handler put me back in the kennel and asked another human to fix them and when I came back out they were gone! This new handler is OK.
She put aylmeris on me this spring! Yeah! I can move around more freely now without the traditional jesses trailing behind. I have been practicing flying short distances and my new handler has been helping out too. I can now go about 5-8 feet, and it feels so nice that I have to stretch my wings out once I land. Bathing is a lot nicer now too, no more stiff leather jesses.
I put on some weight this spring – I could tell my handler was having a difficult time the way she exhaled when I bated. My new mew is so big! My other handler put up some fantastic perches before he flew away, and the new one put covering on the perches to protect my feet, I have a nice water bath, a place to sun bathe, and several times a week I get put out in the Bird TLC yard on the creance. It’s lovely to walk around in the grass and flowers, flex my toes in the soil, and sometime I like to pull up the grass. So, everything is great, lots of food, nice views, regular exercise . . . around the end of May I started a nest scrape just under my long perch. I slowly started guarding it, trying to tell my new handler that I didn’t want her near my nest. She finally figured it out last week, but only after I got down into the nest to clean it – lost of dry clumps of grass, insects, and waste. I know she noticed the indention in the ground in May, but obviously she thought it was just a characteristic of the ground since the mew floor is exactly level everywhere. I’ve been trying to let other humans know about my nest too, especially when they get too close to that side of the mew. I think they all know now and they’ve been doing a pretty good job of respecting my territory.
My handler is signed up for more programs in August, a couple of them are outside which I like. Once school starts there will probably be programs too. I will encourage my new handler to keep updating my blog; she’s pretty nice, but I still miss the one that flew away 