Terrific Tuesday

A red letter day, indeed.

The day started with me vacuming and tidying the lounge and our bedroom. While I was resting to regain a bit of energy, Graeme asked me to run a visitor to the island to the windmills in Deadwood. (Graeme had a previous appointment, and was not free) The RMS sailed at 1 pm, and this was 11.45am. The trip to Deadwood normally takes about 20 mins.

Mr Bau Rowland is an ornothologist, and badly wanted to get some photos of the wirebirds. He had been told that nests had been sighted in the area just before the windmills. These birds are an extremely endangered species found only on St Helena. They are about 3" high, and make their nests in the dirt on the ground.

It was raining heavily (for St Helena, that is) but I took off as quickly as I could. When we reached the area we were looking for, we saw one wirebird taking a bath in the puddles in the road, but he was too far away to get a good photo shot. The rain had cleared a bit by now.

We travelled along slowly, skidding in the mud once or twice, and saw one or two birds flying around the car, but could not get any decent shots

Bau asked me to turn around and park the car near an area that looked most like what had been described as "the spot" to him. While I waited in the car Bau opened a wire fence gate and slowly walked around, looking on the ground. Suddenly I saw him taking photos and looking excited. He had discovered a nest. He had spotted a bit of shell through the dirt in a patch of earth, and had carefully exposed the 2 eggs. He got some beautiful shots of the eggs with his fancy camera. I got out of the car with my basic "point and shoot" camera, and followed him. Our eyes caught the mother bird doing the "broken wing thing" and trying to lure us away from her nest. We got a few good shots of that performance. As soon as we moved away from the nest, the mother bird returned to it, and quickly covered the eggs with dirt again.

Bau was beaming. We now had 25 minutes to get back to the RMS before it sailed.

Having safely delivered the happy ornothologist to the waiting ship, Graeme and I checked the post office for mail. What a delight to get 2 parcels from SA. One from our previous church - full of "cannot get it on St Helena" things, like spares for our vacuum cleaner, an exercise ball for me, dried onions to cope with the present onion shortage, and even new braces for Graeme's trousers! The other parcel was from my sister-in-law. She is CRAZY about animals. Her parcel contained a gift for each of our 4 pets, as well as for each of the 3 humans. The cats got fancy collars, and the dogs got a dress each (pugs like to dress up)

Graeme went to visit Daphne Peters in hospital, and Arthur and I went to the Cape Villa Bible study. Arthur is going through the letter to the Thessalonians, and I am enjoying the way that he opens up a book and gives new insights.

As I had my camera handy, I took a photo of a flower growing along the pathway.

Back home with an hour to get ready before the Jamestown Bible study and the book of Ephesians with Graeme.