BBC Autumnwatch! - Aigas Field Centre Scotland

Red Squirrel - Instantly recognisable by their red fur, ear tufts and long, fluffy tails, red squirrels were once the only squirrel species in Europe.

David Hockney – Woldgate Woods

Autumn morning – photo by Campbell

London’s TUC March Against the Cuts - 20 October 2012

The NUT’s amazing balloons.

Britain needs a future that works!

Some 300,000 people went on the TUC’s London March, walking from Embankment to Hyde Park  in a march against austerity and for A Future That Works. Let us add to this, the thousands more who marched in Glasgow and Belfast.

BBC estimated 100,000 for the London March, however fifty years of protest marches has taught me to always multiply the ‘official’ estimate by three to obtain a realistic number although why this should work, I do not know!

The Humblebee

Arctic Bumblebee (Bombus polaris)
From Shakespeare through to Darwin they were known as "humblebees", because of the humming sound they make. Then in the 20th century, for some reason, they became "bumblebees".


Tierra Del Fuego Bumblebee (Bombus igneous)
Not a good photo yet the best I could find!
I saw many of these huge bumblebees, on the Straits of Magellan Islets, foraging amongst fuchsia blooms.

  Bumblebees do not store food (honey) to survive winter. The little food they do store serves as a reserve meant for feeding the larvae and the egg-producing queen or it is used to survive cold, windy and rainy days. Just like in social wasps the whole colony dies at the end of the season, usually in late summer or autumn. The new queens seek for a place to hibernate.  Most Bumblebee colonies count about 50 to 150 animals. Only the Earth Bumblebee may have richly populated nests in which you find 200 up to 600 individuals.

Coastal walk via Cawsand and Kingsand - Cornwall 14th October 2012

Kingsand Institute
The Institute in Kingsand was built in 1911 to celebrate the coronation of King George V - its clock tower being a famous local landmark.

The twin villages of Kingsand and Cawsand (notorious for smuggling) merge with one another, but historically Kingsand was in Devon, while Cawsand was in Cornwall. On the old county boundary between the two villages there is a house called Devon Corn, which still has the marker on the front of the house. In 1844 however the boundary was redrawn along the Tamar and Kingsand became part of Cornwall.


Kingsand village


Autumn burning - Cawsand village in the distance


Autumn lichen on the coast path


Mount Edgcumbe Country Park - Folly dated 1747  which replaced a navigation obelisk. Built using medieval stone from the churches of St. George and St. Lawrence, at Stonehouse just across the estuary in Devon.

Millbrook’s strange bird - Cornwall

Egyptian Goose  (Alopochen aegyptiacus)

Related to the shelduck, this pale brown and grey goose has distinctive dark brown eye-patches and contrasting white wing patches in flight. It was introduced as an ornamental wildfowl species and has escaped into the wild, now successfully breeding in a feral state. - RSPB bird identifying service!