Beauty and Sadness

This is a slightly unusual and macabre blog post, definitely not my usual offering. But I'm feeling incredibly saddened by something that happened today and didn't want to let it pass by unmarked.

As it has been a dry if somewhat overcast day today I decided to venture out and do a bit of tidying up in the garden which has been sadly neglected over the last few months. I can't describe my sadness when I found not 1 but 4 beautiful but very dead frogs in the pond.

Even in death they look beautiful. I know frogs and toads aren't everyone's idea of pretty but I love all of the wonderful wildlife that is native to this island that is my home.

I am ashamed to say that although I find delight in spotting creatures of all shapes and sizes when out and about, I am very much ignorant when it comes to much of their habits and life cycles. I can only imagine that these poor fellows got trapped when the pond iced over. I feel an incredible sense of guilt about this. Having acknowledged in one of my very own blog posts not so long ago that the pond had iced over, why didn't I have the sense to go and break the ice? Would it have saved these poor creatures? I don't know.

All I know is that this poor face will haunt me for a while. Call me strange but I found it very traumatic fishing these guys out and was in tears by the end of it. I decided to bury them together in the garden, and for now have marked the site with one of my fairy toadstools.Tomorrow I will go out and look for something more fitting for a grave marker. I am resolved now to do more to encourage wildlife to my garden and to also look in to providing a safe environment for them to live in.

Birdwatching at Brownsea

I've been a bit quiet this last couple of days as I've been off on a camping trip over the weekend. We stayed down in Dorset as we wanted to visit Brownsea island, autumn is a great time of year to see the red squirrels.I can't believe how messy we managed to make the tent after only a few short hours!

We were fortunate with the weather and had perfect conditions for the short ferry ride to the island from Poole Quay.

We were on the first ferry so plenty of time for us to stroll amongst the woodland on the island squirrel spotting. There were a few round to see but they were very skittish so no chance of me getting a snap on my little camera.
We have been to the island quite a few times before but have never ventured into the Dorset Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve before, I for one thoroughly enjoyed spending a few hours in the purpose built hides watching the birds and other wildlife.

Unfortunately my little camera doesn't zoom enough to get any proper shots, so you'll just have to trust me when I say there was plenty to see.
Hopefully Mark had some better luck with his camera but he hasn't had time to download the pics yet so we'll have to wait and see.

No time for stitching as I was too busy enjoying the sunshine. I think posts from me will be few and far between as we are off on vacation for a week from next weekend and as I'm working all week I think my evenings will be mostly taken with making sure everything gets packed and planned for, but I will try and get in a few before we leave next Saturday.