Before heading North for the Autumn season, the Exmouth clan popped round for some lunch. Here are some pictures, mostly for you Mum…
Before leaving for Scotland I spent some time up the allotment, with Mum. I hoped to get some shots of insects in action. These are some of the (mixed) results…
My first night in the van for some time (early June?), was accompanied by the heaviest downpour Devon has experienced this summer. However, it felt like home, and apart from waking at one point due to dreaming that the rain was inside the van with me, I slept pretty well. Myself and Dave waited for the weather to subside a little before walking around Venford reservoir, and then on to the very attractive woods alongside the river Dart.
As I’m off to Scotland soon, and Dave had some free time, we decided to get together to explore some of nearby Dartmoor. First we walked to Wistman’s wood, then, before the rain became too heavy, we camped up in a car park near Venford reservoir.
Wistman’s wood is a beautiful piece of Oak wood not far from Two Bridges. It’s dominated by gnarly, character rich oak trees, with the occasional Rowan and Birch. I’m afraid I have no idea of deer numbers in the area, or of what grazing pressures the wood may be under, but I was surprised to find that only a very small section of the wood is fenced off. The area within the fence appears to display considerably more regeneration than that outside.
There was a plane approaching that sounded different to anything I could remember hearing before. A louder, more clapping sound than the normal single propeller planes that fly over. So, I thought I’d go out and check it out. Just as I did a plane with four props banked around over head and over the houses into the distance. By the time I’d run inside to grab my camera it had finished another curving, banking flight over Exmouth, and I finally caught a brief glimpse of it being accompanied by a much smaller single prop fighter, as it flew back in the direction it had come from.
I’m guessing it was a Lancaster bomber, accompanied by a Spitfire. I just can’t imagine what kind of a noise tens, or maybe hundreds of these planes would have made when taking off. Or how hearing the sound of their engines, in the distance, after they’d been away for hours must have been so emotive. Just hearing one flying overhead somehow left me feeling melancholy.
Week two included a fire, survey work, an amazingly successful heathland amble and plenty of general maintenance, mostly with Trevor one of the estate workers. The good people at Arne also keep a blog (some great pics get posted there and it’s a useful tool to keep track of migrant birds), which can be found here:
http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/groups/arne/blog/default.aspx
Whilst at Arne I’ve also been running in an attempt to see whether I’m going to be capable of competing in the Baxters Loch Ness corporate 10k, while I’m in Scotland. Every three or four nights I ran to Ridge and back, about 8k, and on my third and final attempt I managed it in under 45 minutes, which I was pretty chuffed with given that I’d had ‘Trev’s gut’ for most of the time I’d been there.
Here are some pictures of invertibrates that don’t fit into the previous two posts. Most notable, I suppose, were the majestic looking dragonflies. In case you’re wondering where the birds on this RSPB reserve are, well the RSPB is not all about protecting birds. In fact it concentrates more on protecting habitats, and improving biodiversity, which in turn should help bird species. And from my point of view, although I saw 67 different species of bird while staying at the reserve, they were a lot more difficult to get good photos of than these invertebrates…
I also saw some butterflies that I can’t ever remember having seen before (the comma and common blue), and some quality caterpillars…
Life since the office 
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