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Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, funghi - call them what you like, Autumn, 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness', may not to some be as appealing weatherwise as spring and summer, but the way fungi just appear out of the ground is quite magic - though 'magic mushrooms' may be best left to Glastonbury Festivalgoers. The ones that appear on trees last a lot longer. Here are some photos of my favourites, taken over the years. Andrew Graham has more to say on the subject on the MoreNews page. Peter Shallcross comments that this horribly wet and windy weather is playing havoc with the last of the house martin migrants - there are many in the Wildlife Hospital and reports of thousands on Portland held back by the wind and rain - hope there is enough of a fine window to let them go. This video link I posted earlier showed them around three weeks ago, an amazing sight. We are very much in the transition between summer and autumn, both weather and wildlife: temperatures have dropped and the rain has just kept on coming. The swallows and martins are the most obvious migrants moving south but careful observation reveals warblers moving along the hedges.
It is amazing the numbers that turn up in the nets of bird ringers. On Salisbury Plain one of them, Matt Prior can catch 500 migrants of different species in a single day.  Picture by Andrej Chudý from Slovakia - https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39987827 Yes, thanks to the COVID precautions in place in the Victoria Hall we can invite you to another in our series of Indoor Talks - this time by David Waters, Director of the Great Bustard Group (GBG) on Salisbury Plain.
Most people haven't got closer than the stuffed one in the entrance to the Salisbury Museum, but Great Bustards are truly magnificent birds, as those of us who joined the Field Trip in August last year will know. They became extinct in Great Britain when the last one was shot nearly two hundred years ago. Over the last twenty years or more the GBG has created a self-sustaining population on Salisbury Plain of around 100 birds, the only successful reintroduction anywhere - and David is just the man to tell us about it. You need to register for this event by contacting Dick Budden via [email protected]. Please go to the Talks page for essential information. |
Photo: Avocets (Izzy Fry)
The headers display photos taken by our members. Do get in touch via the Contact Form if you'd like to submit a photo for selection.
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