of rabbits & the north west passage

It's October & it's mild. The last week has seen nothing but sunshine & blue skies, ok so it is a tadge over cast now, but cold it ain't. What is going on with the weather? Who's doing the messing about then? On this morning's Today program on radio 4, a chap was saying that in the arctic, the North West Passage had been clear of ice for the longest time in recorded history. Perhaps the fate of Franklin will be exposed, so to speak.

The un-typical weather has meant that during the weekends, people are out and about. The car park here was full for most of Sunday as people enjoyed that walk down to the sea. How many got down onto the beach l'm not sure as the sea has been over the cliff top once again at Withow Gap, scouring out all the pebbles from the dyke & bringing down a large chunk of peaty cliff-face.

We are starting to get large flocks of birds coming in now for the winter, yesterday a large skein of barnacle geese came swooping in over the hedge swearing violently at each other, or so it seem, as they jostled for final landing checks. last week, flows of human twitchers were out. A rare bird had been sighted so car loads of Bill Odies were to be seen scurrying about in search of this rare visitor!

Well, there is one animal that doesn't seem to have suffered at all this summer. The rabbit, or shall we say Oryctolagus cuniculus. We have been inundated by the pesky varmites. Hundred of those dear little fluffy bunnies EVERYWHERE.

Normally, we loose a good few through myxomatosis, but this year nothing bar the odd one. Even Gordon & Lucy-Piglet's efforts seem to be little more than a scraping across the surface. The amount of damage that they do is amazing. All our trees have the longest available plastic tubes around, even the hedge plants, in order to save them from those sharp teeth. To a rabbit nothing more delicious than a lovely, juicy, nibbleable sapling! We must have a breed of Super Rabbits, oh where are you the Anti Pesto Team?