Dodging rain showers yesterday we returned to the falconry center for a closer look at the birds there.

This is Russell, a noisy young Harris Hawk. Harris Hawks (a species from the American deserts) have become the falconer’s favorites, even in Europe, as they are friendly, adaptable, and gregarious. In the wild they hunt in small flocks, with the long legged males walking through the undergrowth to flush out the prey, and the larger females diving down from above to kill it.

Paula made friends with an American Kestrel.

They also have ferrets…

… and snakes.

I forgot to pack my beard trimmer on this trip. Maybe I should audition for a job as Santa.

Two years ago when we visited we saw this gyr falcon flying…

… but he’s currently being ‘rested’ because instead of coming back to the glove during shows he went off hunting pigeons. Instead Russell got to show off with volunteers from the audience.

They also brought out a barn owl…

… but it decided it would rather join the audience.

It took a whole baby rat to bribe it back into action.

After the lunchtime rainstorm, we went out to The Dewa Roman Experience. The museum has reproductions of scenes from everyday life in Roman Chester…

… but it is built on top of a genuine Roman archeological site.

An extremely enthusiastic guide was there to tell us all about Roman medical and surgical techniques. He would have been the best thing in the museum were it not for this.

It’s not just a hands on museum, it’s a nose on museum. You get a chance the experience the smells of ancient Roman Chester: smoke, lavender, latrine, and feet. The latrine olfactorium contains two of the sponge on a stick things that the Romans used instead of toilet paper. Actually, according to the guide, this far north they would probably have used a handful of moss rather than an exotic imported sponge.

They do have a few cases of genuine Roman stuff including a mosaic…

… some glassware…

and a Mister Squinty jug.

From the way the eye and the mouth are both lopsided, this is either the first depiction of Bell’s Palsy, or a really bad potter.

The skull is fake, but I’ll give them an A for effort.

Last night we went to a production of Twelfth Night in an outdoor theater in the round.

It was a fun production, with a large enough cast that only one significant character (Fabian) was cut. Feste the jester was played by a woman. When she was facing the other way she was hard to hear, but that’s OK as none of Feste’s gags are funny any more anyway. Viola and Sebastian, the twins, were both cast as black people. For the sake of the plot we have to assume that in Illyria all black people do look the same, even if one had shoulder length braids and the other had short hair and a five days growth of beard.

We got seats in the back row, where there was some protection from the rain, which was just as well as there were a couple of showers during the show. I’ve already quoted Feste’s closing song in this blog, but that Shakespeare guy knew what he was talking about.

When that I was and a little tiny boy, 
    With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, 
A foolish thing was but a toy, 
    For the rain it raineth every day. 

This morning we left Chester and headed back south. It kept threatening to rain, but we only got one brief shower just was we were coming out of the last lock. The locks on this stretch are double wide, and when going uphill there are very strong currents filling the lock. We tried various techniques for keeping the boat from sloshing around. We finally had it worked out that we had to use a spring line with the engine pulling against it by the fifth and final lock.

Ah, well, more locks tomorrow to improve our technique.