The past week or so has seen plenty of natural lows in the British Isles: the UK is experiencing more wildfires; one in six species are at risk of extinction in Great Britain; a person chopped down a tree (for some reason this is worse than lots of people elsewhere chopping down lots of trees); oh, and the go-ahead has been given to extract more gas and oil from the North Sea, single-handedly driving a coach and horses through any plan to meet our climate targets. It is all rather depressing, and I struggled to think of how to lift the mood. Signing online petitions helps a little, but travelling over 500 miles to join an actual demonstration in London is clearly not carbon-neutral, never mind the financial cost. Oh well, there's always the Autumn vole survey to do for the Orkney Native Wildlife Project, so that will have to suffice. Our designated site is a couple of 1km transects on Mull Head in Deerness. Several potential dates for the survey came and went in a flurry of heavy s