Feast to Famine

I became very busy in August with several trips away from home.

August 4 to 11. I was helping Andy Lester, Conservation Director for A Rocha UK with a week at Lee Abbey in north Devon looking at Creation Care through the Psalms. We had walks, pond dipping. talks, rock pooling, a boat trip,beach art, bat walks and innovative styles of worship. For two of the evenings we set up a moth trap and had some reasonable catches. The two most popular were Setacious Hebrew Character, because of its name and Poplar Hawkmoth, because of its size.

Here also two pictures from our visit to the beach. There is the shell of a masked crab and some beach art. I still have no idea how they managed to balance all those stones. On the boat trip we were able to have good views of some porpoise

The following weekend, August 17 to 19 I went to the Bird Fair at Rutland Water. Two days I helped on the A Rocha stand and on the Sunday I worked for the RSPB. On a couple of the evenings we went to a hide on the edge of Rutland Water. There were scores of gulls, a few terns, a green sandpiper and we saw the ospreys flying low, dragging their feet in the water. We understand they were washing fish scales off their talons. The rarest thing to fly over was a Vulcan bomber, though I was more excited at meeting both Richard Lewington, the illustrator of butterfly and moth books and Clive Stace, the author of the flora.

  

Early September I visited Northamptonshire as part of the A Rocha UK "Time Out" weekend. It is a time when we plan, pray, learn and chill together as a team. We did get the chance to check round some local lakes. This enabled Norman Crowson to photograph some Banded Demoiselles, a Golden Y moth and this Sacred Ibis. There were also several migrant Hawker dragonflies, a hobby and quite a few swallows on migration

New additions to my list are getting scarce as you can see. I could only add the two above in the first three weeks of September. I intend to keep searching up to the end of December since I still have not had waxwings or Michaelmas Daisy ..... yet.

Total at the end of September is 870