So we've been hit by a hurricane...

So we’ve been hit by a hurricane... well the tail-end of one, how did you find it? I mean as far as bad weather went, I can say we’ve seen worse, but I’m rather grateful for our tail-end of the storm as it seems to be causing few travel disruptions and damages caused by its such strong winds.

The beautiful sunrise from the reserve this morning

I should have guessed that, after writing this, within minutes the gails started, it looked like storm force 10 from the office window as all the leaves rushed down the street. Then it began to hail and some really unfortunate news stories about issues caused by the weather popped up on BBC news. Typical, next time I’ll keep my mouth shut!

Anyway, the reserve is defiantly more covered in leaves now than it was a couple of days ago and they leave incredible golden dusting! As I’m writing this I’m looking out the window at the trees half bent over by the wind and a tiny, juvenile grey squirrel is all hunched over with it’s tail bent round itself to shelter from the wind. My, it does look a little cold up there and here’s me in a nice toasty office.

The Dewy Grass Caught the Sunlight Wonderfully

My nature walk round the reserve was a rather different one this week, more of a well-paced amble round the reserve. I even got to chat to Trevor, one of our wonderful wildlife garden volunteers, who was struggling to find a suitable place to plant an apple tree that had been rescued by the builders from the demolition area. Mrs (or Mr) Robin was also there to greet me in the wildflower garden, searching for worms in an area I presume Trevor had just been digging.

I took a different route around the reserve today, heading along the public bridle path that backs onto the nature reserve, just near the construction site. Here I decided to stop, as I had seen a few small brown birds flitting between the trees. Sure enough within a couple of minutes birdlife returned to the hedgerows and I was surrounded by a mixture of songs, including a robin and also a chiffchaff, who normally fly back to their wintering grounds in late August to September so this was a surprise. Then I was greeted by a mysterious bird, it had a blackcap, so I initially thought it must be a blackcap, but it didn’t look like ones I had seen previously, so I jotted down its description, with black markings on its flanks. As always it was too up in the trees and too fast for me to get a photo; as my Dad has always told me and as the saying goes… “never work with children or animals”… they never stay still long enough. When I got back to the office I looked in the book... it was a female bullfinch! 

The Gills of the Un-identified Mushroom

The light was wonderful on my walk and caught the dewy grass and cobwebs beautifully down in Kingfisher Corner. I also managed to find a mushroom!!! Noted someone had already found it for me but had dropped it on the ground. When I came to look in my ID book I realise quite how diverse and complicated mushrooms and their identification is. If anyone has a clue on what this mushroom may be please post below. I shall have to spend my extremely long coach journey tomorrow reading up on fungi!

The Un-identified Mushroom

Jazz