Natural highs and lows

We've been home from our holiday for over a fortnight and I'm seriously behind on my blogging. Well, as serious as it gets around here, which isn't very. Unless it's some ecological nightmare. Which it often is, as there's not so much good environmental news these days. When I say 'these days', I mean since the Industrial Revolution at least. Whoa! That paragraph took on a depressing life of its own. Sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes, our holiday. The last evening in the cottage was the usual mix of eating perishables from the fridge and frantically trying to remember in what order I packed the car a week and a half ago. A casual look out of the window brought all that to a juddering halt, as there was some small gingery creature tearing around the garden at a rate of knots, weaving in and out of the bushes and sending startled Pheasants in all directions. I called Megan to the window but, predictably, as soon as she arrived, all was calm, without a scamper to be ...

Under half an hour away from the holiday cottage was the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust's Welney reserve. A brief look at the sightings from previous days revealed that there were several species that would make the trip worthwhile for us, even without the thought of Sunday lunch in the cafe. At this time of year, the Winter flooding of the reserve has not yet subsided, so a few of the paths were inaccessible, but not to worry, we met lots of friendly birders who were only too glad to help with identifying strange-plumaged birds and pointing out fly-over rarities. I should point out, the birds weren't actually strange-plumaged, they were just species we're used to seeing in Orkney in Winter plumage, and here they were changing into their Summer finery. Great White Egret, we managed this ID on our own Avocets, I knew this one from my recent Sanday sighting! During the afore-mentioned lunch, with breaks between courses to twitch Tree Sparrow on the neighbouring feeders, we were...