A weak ridge covers southern England, with an approaching warm front bringing plenty of cloud. Conditions at 12z (1PM BST): Thickness, 549dam, temperature 15C (dewpoint 9C). Wind from the WSW, 15 MPH. Today's high, 16C, last night's low 10C (source: MetO, the 12z GFS and NOAA).

I awoke this morning before dawn, hearing the wind whipping around the guttering outside. After dozing for a bit it was time to get ready for the day ahead... A grey and overcast scene greeted me outside, with a brisk breeze and temperatures around 13C - not exactly summery!

On the M20 there were signs warning of an accident on the M4 between J10 and J11, which is the way I usually go - by the time I got to the M25 the words "long delays" had been added, which is code I've found for "traffic at a standstill". So, I took myself on a detour through Reading and arrived a few minutes later than planned, to find John (our safety officer) already there.

The European wolves came up to the fence as I left the car, with Alba carrying a large chunk of food in his jaws:

Alba

I watched as Lunca behaved submissively to Latea. It seems that Lunca still gets picked on at times by Latea, but today they were fine around each other. I then found John and went down to Kodiak and Kenai with him. It was decided to let the wolves out into the side enclosure, which would allow John to mow some of the grass in their main enclosure. At this time of the year it gets pretty tall and the wolves can often be hidden from view, especially if they lie down in it.

Here's a picture of Kodiak a bit later in the day, scent-rolling in the freshly cut grass:

Kodiak

Wolves (and for that matter domestic dogs) will often roll in strong scents, partly to overwrite it with their own scent. Kenai joined in as well, although my pictures of her were somewhat fuzzy - the mesh was perfectly in focus though!

After that we headed back to the Obs Room as the others started to arrive. Today was down as cleaning only, as the wolves had just come back from the Bath and West show. The wolves were well received (as usual), although there were a few people who assumed the wolves were tranquilised. The best way to prove they're not is to see them with ice-cream - it's a reminder that wolves are fast, much faster than some would imagine!

Anyway, as we set off to start the cleaning there was a large, hovering raptor seen above the neighbouring field - a red kite. I've seen them around a few times, but until now I'd not had a camera with me.

A red kite

As can be seen from the photo, it was still overcast and gloomy, although despite all the cloud I still managed to catch the sun on my face - suncream's a must for me it seems, even if it's overcast.

Duma and Dakota stayed out last night, so we started off with the Euro's kennels. They didn't take long to clean, then we headed down to Kodiak and Kenai. Kodiak was his usual self, coming up to the fence and growling, hackles up. He's got large tufs of loose fur where he's moulting and it was pretty tempting to pluck them away. However, for safety reasons that's not allowed and once he realised we weren't going to make a fuss of him he headed off, leaving us to it.

By now the sun was trying to break through the clouds, without much success. However, it was shining when I took this picture showing what goes on - Caroline's sweeping the straw from the floor while Angela uses a shovel to remove soiled straw from the bed. All the kennels follow the same layout and the room I'm standing in to take the picture also has a concrete bed in it. Later in the day, once everything had dried, we put fresh straw down for the wolves - and this is done day in, day out throughout the year, the only exception being when the wolves are left out overnight.

Cleaning in progress

With the cleaning out of the way, it was time to see Duma and Dakota. The latter wolf has an infection which is being treated with antibiotics. The trouble is wolves aren't too keen on popping pills, so we used the trick of inserting the pill into a chunk of cheese, which wolves enjoy eating. While this was going on Angela and I stayed with Duma to keep her busy...

Duma

Here's a photo of Angela stroking Duma on the belly, which the wolves find reassuring. When we do "meet and greets" with the public, they stroke the wolves there although they have to keep their height for dominance reasons.

That pretty much wrapped it up for the day, although before I left I wanted to get some footage of Duma and/or Dakota in their enclosure. Annoyingly I pressed the wrong button (doh!) and missed most of it, but I did catch the final few seconds of Duma's approach:

There's a short MPEG video available here:

http://www.medvale.net/wolves/05-06-05/june.mpg

What you're seeing there is Duma galloping up to the fence and sniffing the camera. It took all of two seconds for her to travel 7 feet or so, look up to sniff the camera and go down again. It's a perfect example of why you have to be continually aware around wolves as they are extremely fast!

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