emmoworld

This year I have been lucky with the weeks I have chosen to take off work. I had a compulsory week off around Easter which had the odd very sunny day including one when I was power boating off the coast. In August I chose the only week when it didn't rain and now in September again it looks like being a really good week for weather. Yesterday afternoon was spent at possibly our favourite spot in North Norfolk, at Pensthorpe - a wild bird sanctuary owned by the people who make Jordan nut bars etc. You walk through a set of double doors into another world, spread over several acres. I think originally it was a series of quarries that have now been flooded and the surrounding area planted with reeds and amazing garden areas. The birds are numbered in their thousands and they operate a rare breeding programme. My favourite are the Cranes who are big and very vicious - determined tolet you know whoare boss. One day they will be released back into the wild. This is also the time for the arrival of the wild geese for winter. The skys fill with the sight of V shaped formations as they head for the marshland along the coast.

Our own lodgers have now leftg for warmer climates. We have house martins and swifts who nest in and under our roof. The swifts left a while ago but the house martins left promptly on 1st September, only to return briefly a few days ago - not sure why - maybe they forgot a suitcase. They are gone again now though and I don't expect they will be back until next May/June. I miss my chats with the new born house martins who lived outside the bedroom window. They would give me long hard stares, as if to say, go away you're too old to play with. Very much a family thing - arriving home about 8pm each night there would be a flurry of chatter coming from the nests as they insisted on one more bedtime story about the perils of flying thousands of miles every year.