The birds of Cyprus? Not in September.

No………………  it’s not been a break down in communications, or computer links, and there is nothing wrong with your receivers.    It’s all down to me, and 14 days in Cyprus during which the only posts were 3 postcards sent back to the UK, which, for the record had still not arrived 5 days after we got home.

I apologise that you have not been bombarded with my words of wisdom for 2 weeks, but this week DOES culminate in some (for me-) significant news!! (see below)*****

12^th September we flew from East Mids airport to Pathos, and therein was the first “happening”.

Quite a surprise was the route taken by the aircraft after leaving Castle Donnington. 7.45am, we left flying west, then banked to Starboard, round Derby, over Hulland Ward…….. and then had an absolutely clear birds eye view of Carsington Water.

Stones Island was very clear, and even the Osprey nests at Lane End. The reservoir was just 73.7% full and the low water level was very evident. Sadly, my camera was in my suitcase, because the view would equal any of the photos I have seen taken from a hot air balloon.

Thanks to a lovely check-in girl at the Tui check-in desk, who changed our pre-allocated seats from 3 rows apart to side by side, towards the end of the flight, I found that I was sitting next to Vanessa. Vanessa, it transpired, lives in the Matlock area, knows Jill H a fellow Carsington volunteer………………. and has been on my Carsington BwB walk 3 times! Yet until we had talked for a while, she did not recognise me. (Ed;  Why should she?) Just proves the statement that you often don’t recognise a person when you see them out of context.  We talked birds for the rest of the flight.

And so to the Cyprus birds. (Stand by for anti-climax!!)   Hooded Crows (many); House Sparrows (many); Woodpigeons (a few); Sardinian Warbler (2); Magpie (1); Hoopoe (Heard but not seen); Swallows (fleeting glimpses – on migration?); Kestrel (1 – calling – seen twice), and a large circling raptor which the bus driver would not slow down for me to look at, let alone stop.     

And that was it. Well at least the Hoody was an addition to my 2018 world list……big deal!

And I did try… well a little bit. On the penultimate day at 8.30am, I did climb up to a scrub area behind the hotel which had been productive in the past, but with temperatures in the early-30’s the scrub was bereft of everything except feral cats, and at 10.00am I was back by the pool clutching an iced drink (or 2).

Our ultra-relaxed two weeks in Amatheus (east of Limassol) was dedicated to liquid (had to keep hydrated), and food, interspersed with one game when the team achieved the maximum score on giant Jenga, 3 times winning the daily quiz (-the 3^rd such win forcing us to sit on our balcony and drink a whole bottle of (-sort of) Champagne before dinner, and generally doing nothing else).

***** It was in those relaxed moments that I finally made the decision that I had been pondering since my pneumonia session, that I would retire as a Carsington Water Volunteer Ranger at the end of 2018.  I have been a volunteer for 21 years, longer than any other volunteer ranger, and only beaten in service by Phil Lemon a PAID full-time ranger for 26 years.  

The fact that January would include a major birthday milestone for me was a contributory factor and had the company rules about retiring at 70 not been lifted 10 years ago, I would have been well down the road by now!! (YOU do the sums!!)

After the joint discussions and deliberations by Mary and I, on the 28th September 2018 I submitted my resignation, giving Severn Trent enough time to plan for a future leader, or leaders, to head the BwB walks from January 2019, a walk which I originated 13 years ago. in January 2006   

If I have not mentioned it earlier, I am doing the same for the Friends of Markeaton Park.

You will appreciate that this is the end of a long, but thoroughly enjoyable era for me, but I will still lead the Carsington and the Markeaton walks until the end of 2018, and the Carsington away-day at Old Moor on the 14^th will still go ahead

There you are…… I’ve come out!!