Nature and that

We’d arranged to meet up with Julie, Jack, Maisie and Lorna at PYO today although Julie and I had failed to speak since to actually arrange a time but we managed it this morning and as Julie has a cold and I was worried about doing too much on my ankle today we planned a short meet up from 11ish with picnic lunch afterwards.

The weather was looking potentially nasty but I’ve started to wonder if we’ll ever have proper rain again (yes I know I will regret saying such a thing 😉 ).

We arrived a good five minutes early and then Julie arrived dead on time which rather shocked all of us – we are so rarely ever on time for anything so to both be there promptly was amazing.

We only really wanted raspberries so we walked slowly there, picked loads and then walked slowly back. This took a good hour mind you as the kids were off playing and we were chatting. We paid for our raspberries and then sat in the field outside on the picnic benches eating lunch and then chatting while the kids played. The rain did put in a half hearted appearance but not enough to drive us away.

We came home and I got some beef curry in the slow cooker for Ady and I for dinner later and we watched Princess and the Frog on dvd a couple of times (the second accidentally, Davies pressed the wrong button but we left it running anyway) which had some good songs but was otherwise unremarkable.

I did the kids’ tea and Ady came home then we headed back out to Pulborough Brooks as we had booked for the ‘Night time wings and other things’ event this evening. We went to it last year and enjoyed it and this year was just as good. We looked at moths they had trapped and caught last night from small to huge, common to rare and then released them, watched some owl chicks in the nest box cam and then walked round the reserve. We watched deer, a fox, various birds, saw evidence of badgers (faked, obviously 😉 ), saw green woodpecker poo and rook pellets (they make pellets just the same as owls, although with different content, these were mostly beetles). We lifted corrugated metal sections to reveal any reptiles but saw no snakes this time, just one small slow worm. They got the bat detectors out and we listened for and saw plenty of bats, shone our torches into the ponds to spot newts and waterboatmen and finally saw the fledgling barn owls out learning to fly (from a distance and more flashes of white than anything clear enough to photograph but exciting nonetheless).

As happened last year they over ran and despite it supposedly finishing at 915pm it was gone 10pm when we left and there were still people there. We were conscious of getting home to close up the chickens and ducks and I should probably have arranged for Dad to nip over and do so but the kids were tired anyway and we were hungry too. It was a really good event though, very impressed with how much of the information about various animals the kids had retained.

Back home I made toast for the kids as they were hungry again having gone so many hours past teatime, put the rice on for our dinner and had a quick bath. The kids were asleep pretty quickly, we had a very nice curry and watched the last episode and all the dvd extras on Outnumbered.