Blog

Our new website goes live today. What a relief it has been – three months in the planning and eight months in the building! During this time we’ve been writing, sourcing images and working with colleagues on how it should look, feel and work.

We’ve worked hard to make more of the information about Harewood easier to find. Information is, mostly, now only three clicks from the home page. There are loads more images available for people to look at and get a feel of what Harewood is like before they visit.

We’re also integrating social networking sites directly into the website, with both Flickr and our Blog built directly into the website. This provides a direct feedback route for our customers to tell us what they think and also to put their photos up so the world can see them.

I could blather on about all the technical stuff about search engine optimisation and clever things that our agency, BrandNew, have done with the site, but I won’t. I’ll finish with telling you about My Harewood.

My Harewood is our new section whereby Harewood Cardholders and other visitors can tell us what they would like receive in their email newsletters. By choosing your interests in the preferences section, visitors can filter the events, exhibitions and news they see on their My Harewood home page. This automatically updates as new events, news or exhibitions are added.

We’ve also put some ‘not quite accurate’ information into the Did you know section and will be announcing a competition about this shortly. Come back for more later!

Simon Warner is our artist in residence on the Number 36 Bus between Leeds and Harewood during our exhibition ‘Town and Country’ until 20th September. The residency is in partnership with bus operator Transdev Blazefield and Project Space Leeds (PSL), a contemporary art space in Leeds’ city centre. Follow the progress of Simon’s residency and add your own stories and contributions. Simon’s developing work in text, photography and film can also be viewed in the ‘Waiting Room’ at PSL throughout the partner exhibition there. Look out for announcements on the Blog too about other guided walks Simon will be conducting using scheduled bus services.

Did you know that if you come on the bus to Harewood you can get in for half price on presentation of a valid bus ticket?

The flamingos have now laid nine eggs. Four of which are unfortunately not going to hatch. The remaining five are all ok. The big excitement of today is that this is day 28 of the incubation period. Flamingo eggs normally incubate in 27 – 32 days, so we are expecting the first egg to hatch today or in the next couple of days.

The media have been out for a news item with BBC Look North airing on their 1330hrs news and also this evening at 1830. The Yorkshire Evening Post will also be featuring it tonight or tomorrow.

Did you know that you can Adopt a Bird at Harewood? If you would like to adopt a baby flamingo please call 0113 218 1000. All proceeds from adoption go towards our conservation and research activity. Adopting a Bird doesn’t mean that you can take the bird home, but we’ll acknowledge your adoption with a welcome pack, a plaque on the enclosure and send you a twice yearly ‘Stock Press’ Newsletter, as well as invite you to a summer evenings bird adoption evening.

The Yorkshire Evening Post has done a lovely write up on our new exhibition and Professor David Hill’s new book.

After nearly twenty years of nothing, our Chilean Flamingos have started laying eggs, there are currently six eggs being sat on by the Flamingos. The first eggs are due to hatch in about a week.

One of the theories as to why the Flamingos haven’t laid eggs before is that there haven’t been enough of them to feel comfortable. To rectify this we have introduced life size cardboard cut outs of the birds and a sprinkler system to keep the island that they are laying their eggs on damp. Having damp soil enables them to build their nests as you can see in the picture.