Merry Christmas

Our monthly collection

Well it is very good news!






Whilst out on our regular monthly rubbish collection we only managed to fill one bag of rubbish.
































This shows the new rubbish bins in the village are really having a positive effect!













It was a really beautiful day for a walk.The temperatures have continued to be extremely mild during the day around 18 degrees in the sunshine.

































And some of our neighbours were out walking too collecting Rose Hips.......

Village News!

While we have been away, taking a well deserved break for a few weeks, something very special has happened in the village!




We now have bins all over the village and a weekly rubbish collection!






We are so excited about this and we are sincerely hoping that it will make a huge difference to the amount of rubbish that accumilates on the reserve.

We will be going out on our Autumn rubbish collection in the next few weeks ..so fingers crossed!

Mike goes to Malta

Earlier this month Mike was over in Malta volunteering with CABS
to prevent illegal bird hunting and trapping.

See this excerpt from the report below from:
www.komitee.de/en/index.php?index

MALTA: Final Autumn Camp Report



In the course of the 3 week operation a total of 486 cases of illegal hunting were recorded. These included 23 directly observed shooting down of birds of prey, some of which were captured on video. In addition 24 observations or finds of protected birds, with what were evidently shot gun injuries, were registered. Four cases of illegal wader species trapping and the discovery of one illegal cage trap containing a dozen freshly-caught Turtle Doves were also recorded.

In the course of nightly mapping of illegal electronic bird lures, used by hunters and trappers to lure birds to their nets or shooting hides, 119 ‘bird callers’ were located. Between 15 and 30 September CABS teams registered a total of 286 shots after the afternoon hunting curfew imposed by the government

The final report from the CABS autumn migration camp - Operation SAFE HAVEN - is now online and available for download below. It includes all incidents and other observations made by our teams over three weeks and a short evaluation of the collated data. Our sincere thanks go to all 32 team and staff members from Bulgaria, Germany, Holland, Israel, Italy, Malta, Poland, UK and the USA who contributed to the success of our operations. We hope to see them all back in 2010.

You can download a detailed report as pdf here simply cut and paste the link below:
MALTA_final_report_autumn_2009-2.pdf



For more information and details on how you can add your support visit : http://www.komitee.de/en/index.php?index

Migration.....

Well the birds are definitely on the move now.

This morning while drinking my tea in the kitchen I was able to witness a
fabulous sight.
Thousands of swallows taking a short break and sheltering from the rain,as best they could,on the electric and phone wires outside our guesthouse and all up and down the street for as far as I could see!








It was truely amazing.I have seen large numbers do this before but never so many.



























































They were coming in from all directions .These pictures really do not capture it but there must have been 4,000 or more.
Beautiful!


This year we have also the pleasure of seeing large numbers of Bee-eaters every day over the garden and over the past week this very special vistor here.....







Quite a few pairs and juveniles have been helping us to keep our wasp population down in the garden.









This one here was resident for 2 weeks outside the kitchen window eating all the wasps it could that were trying to nest in our roof!
Sorry wasps but we could do we these Red-backed Shrikes visiting more often!

August news

Well the heat has really been intense ,high 30's everyday and very little to no rain whatsoever....

But we have been busier this August than ever before!
With guests coming from all over the world UK, France,Italy,Germany and Slovenia to name but a few!



















August also brought Jerry's birthday and we did find time in our busy schedule to celebrate locally with some friends and neighbours......




Sorry if the pictures seem a little blurred....

.....the evening was a bit too!







Also in August we had the annual festival day in nearby village Popina.
Great fun was had singing, dancing and eating!
Also some strange but interesting activities......

Red-footed Falcon box check....

Mike and our good friend John went out today to check on the Red-footed Falcon boxes that we have up just outside the village.

















It was difficult to see throught he trees so it was lucky they had the GPS ,that was donated by MYBulgaria , to help them!
Although they are still not being used there has been signs of activity in the area.

















In the next few months we hope to meet up with the volunteers again to talk about planning the building of the boxes for next Spring...