Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Delight to disappointment in 24 minutes

The longest day, Tuesday 21 june started out brilliantly. 14 kids from a church group in Leyland came to Cuerden to enjoy pond dipping. It was a fun evening. We finished at 8.00pm after finding scores of tadpoles, a few minnows, one leech and a stickleback. Straight on then with Lancashire Mammal Group to setting some Longworth traps to see which small mammals we might catch on Cuerden. As we were completing our setting the traps, a gentle misty rain started to fall. Home to bed so we could be up early Wednesday. 0740 start as we inspected our traps. The first one - empty; the second had been tripped and felt quite heavy-ish. We had caught a woodmouse. After checking all 24 traps we had caught 10 woodmice, which we then freed. We felt it had been a good evening/morning's work. Traps then had to be cleaned and the canes used to re-find the traps, collected.
I then prepared for another pond dipping session. This was with some kids from Belarus who were victims of the Chenobyl disaster. Despite my having no Russian and all the kids no English we got along fine. This was mainly due to a wonderful lady who translated everything. Back to the Barn for handwashing and lunch. I then rang Cuerden Birds of Prey to check they would be coming. I was told at 1245 they would be on Cuerden at 1300 to 1310. We went to the pineatum and waited... and waited....and waited. By 1340 I rang again only to be told they had to take a bird to the Vet. So we had 16 very disappointed Belarussian children in our pineatum. I managed to play a couple of games and then they left for their hosts' homes. They had had a good morning but not so good an afternoon

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