Paul's Blog - All comments and views are my own,

This morning I joined in with a beach litter pick, organised by the local Wildlife Litter Pickers group aided by employees of both Carmarthenshire County Council and Natural Resources Wales, on a little visited stretch of Cefn Sidan. I say little visited because we were on the Pembrey Sands Air Weapons Range which is off limits to the public Monday - Friday when it is being used for bombing and gunnery practise. A reminder of where we were! The recent storms seem to have left most of the rubbish covered by sand but there was enough for the 25 strong band of litter pickers to do.  Most of the "litter" was in fact discarded fishing net and rope although hard plastics and plastic bottles filled quite a few of the recycling bags amongst the  bags of landfill. With most of the rubbish moved off the beach,  even this end of session photo shows a lot of fishing net debris There has been a concerted effort around the coast of Wales in the past week to

A late and unexpected opportunity to make an autumn visit to the Greek island of Lesvos was not to be missed. So it was that we arrived, at the HOTEL PELA; late on Saturday 15th to night time temperatures in the mid 20's. The hire car was provided by local company TSALIS with their usual efficiency. Sunday morning, and every subsequent morning dawned clear with rapidly warming temperatures reaching around 30'c on average but with a few hours of 32'c before cooling down to the low 20's. The wind, was at times brisk from the NW which did little to cool the temperature but was still refreshing. Having visited Lesvos at this time of year I was prepared for the challenge of finding birds, which is much harder than in the spring however a respectable 77 species, including some specials, was achieved. The highlights of the trip were DALMATIAN PELICAN, with a max of 14 seen;  GARGANEY, PINTAIL, SLENDER-BILLED GULL, BROAD-BILLED SANDPIPER, CURLEW, LESSER SPOTTED EAGLE, C