I was welcomed into the garden with a flurry of bird song as they must of thought it a special day as food was a plenty and the Blackbirds thoroughly enjoyed following me around the garden as I began to rake the leaves unearthing all the juicy bugs! We are very lucky to have such a wide variety of birds that regularly visit and they include, great spotted woodpeckers, nuthatches, blackbirds, robins, great tits, tree creepers, song thrush, bullfinch, siskin and many more (check out my Pinterest board for all of our visitors). We have very active birds and you can see from the picture below that the Woodpecker has been happily tucking into all the tree dwelling grubs!

Autumn has well and truly arrived and the big job of leaf raking has begun which will normally last much of November. Last year along with the newly built pallet composter I also put together a leaf mulcher and last years leaves have decomposed nicely ready to feed the garden as you can see.

While raking through this morning I came across our resident toad (nicknamed Toby) and this beautiful toadstool – it never ceases to amaze me what you find when spending time outdoors. Hopefully over the forthcoming weeks we will have some dry spells as I love photographing the many toadstools I find amongst the undergrowth.

One of the key projects for the weekend was to put together this water-butt on the shed down in the wood. Ironically it would have been better to do it prior to all the rain but I am sure there is much more to come. I am hoping to visit the recycling centre and find some corrugated plastic sheeting which will aid drainage on the roof itself providing more water for next summer.

In addition to this I re-worked all of our bird feeding stations to ensure we have a variety for all the different size birds and feeding habits. One of our natural perches fell during the recent storms so I set out to rejuvenate it with a few old bits from the shed and a couple of the damaged feeders I have had knocking about for ages that were not being used. It has now brought a new feature back into the garden with some additional natural perches for our feathered friends – so what do you think?

In addition to the birds I have also been sorting things out for the hedgehogs as because of the wet summer dry hibernation sites are few and far between. I have checked and reorganised the two rehab boxes we have for rescues and put in dry leaves (stored for a week in the shed to dry out) and short straw. This along with some clean water and dried biscuits may encourage a few to stay over the winter, don’t forget that for more information on what you can do for hedgehogs this winter please visit North Devon Hedgehog Rescue.

Finally after tending to the wildlife I was also able to plant some bulbs for the spring which have included some Gladioli, Anemone, Iris, Freesia’s and a few others. I have also started to prune back the raspberries and other shrubs so it looks like a busy Autumn ahead! A thoroughly enjoyable weekend but now very tired. Night all :0)

So the club was born! the emphasis being on going out with the cameras, enjoying the fabulous North Devon landscapes, wildlife and nature along with each others company and then sharing a few pints! We soon discovered though that the pub has to be the final stop as this may affect our ability to take certain photos due to camera shake although I guess we could use artistic ‘interpretation’ and ‘abstract images’ to cover our tracks.

The club is very informal and there are no subs, no constitutions or papers and we simply enjoy a monthly field trip along with a few additional special events and the results are posted on the website. The group is very relaxed and informal and we learn a lot from each other with no-one feeling daft for asking questions like what is DOF? What’s an f/stop? why do I get blurry shots? Everyone is an equal and we all have something to share and learn from each other whether it is technical knowledge, creativity, knowledge of the local landscapes, flower and fauna identification and so much more. The other great thing about the group having it’s own website is that it allows those in the group that do not have their own websites or online profiles to showcase their work. We are still very much in our infancy and we hope to develop over the next 12 months but why not pop over to our website and see what we get up to. If you would like to leave any comments, suggestions or questions then please use the contact page on the website.

Below is a screenshot of the new website I have put together for the group and our new Word Cloud :0) I hope you enjoy the images group members have been brave enough to put out there in the public domain!