Circle of Life

The Circle of Life is slowly closing again. The majority of long-distance migrating birds have already left our country so it's time to sum up our Autumn season.

We had magnificent weather, very untypical for October, with temperatures of 12-15 (!) degrees during the day and lots of sun. Beginning Volunteers had plenty of opportunities to master their skills of bird extraction - there were 100-300 birds captured every day.

Apart from the most abundant great tits, blue tits, chaffinches, robins, song thrushes and blackbirds, we've also had lesser and greater-spotted woodpecker, nutchatches, tree creepers, wrens, bullfinches, redpolls, a yellowhammer, siskins, sparrowhawks, jack snipes, spotted crake, bearded reedlings and long-eared owls.

In the free time we foraged for mushrooms and did some exciting amber hunting with UV during the night at the shore. We also found a beaver skull and donated it to the Gdansk University as a research material. We visited the amber processing lab where we learned to polish our amber pieces and examined them for inclusions.

- It's easy to forget the War in such an environment - we conclude when watching a spectacular sunset over our nets spread out at the reedbed.

- Yes. It's important to appreciate such small things happening in life.

So here we are, Polish, British and Israeli volunteers, camping at the border with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, observing the evening sky together.

Not so far away incomprehensible things are happening right now. Nobody knows what the Future will bring. And we don't have any control over it,

However, there are good things that you can do. There are birds waiting to be ringed. Bonfire waiting to be started. Stories waiting to be told.

... And there's still Nature to care for...