St Georges Day and Early Arrivals

A very patriotic pottery event on St George's Day

Saturday in the courtyard was really busy with potential knights making their own shields!  The Potters ran pottery workshops for children all day showing children how to roll, shape and decorate the raw clay.  They have now an array of shields in the kiln ready for firing which will be ready for pick up very soon.  As well as making shields they also made a dragon "scale" will be used as part of a large sculpture which will be fired outside in the garden on 24th August with a process called "Raku" - quite appropriate in making a dragon as it is a very fiery process!  Once the scales have been fired the final sculpture will be exhibited as part of the annual sculpture trail at the Craft Centre.

The Guide Dogs for the Blind charity also came along and help out and we had a couple of very well behaved Labrador dogs here for the day.

All of this was going on right next to where "Drainpipe Duck" is sitting on her eggs - she sat quietly with most people not even aware she was there, throughout the whole day, she only left the nest for a very short time - what a good mum!

A baby runner duck - first out!

Talking of ducks - we hear that there have been some very early arrivals in the incubator - this little one arrived out of the blue (it was a blue egg too!) at least a 10 days before he was expected.  The mum must have started sitting on the eggs before they were collected.  A couple of days latter there were another couple.  These ducks have a much higher chance of survival bred like this, rather than in the open - we have already seen the Carrion Crow waiting around the ponds and the Moorhens are on the prowl!  I hear that the babies will be in the gardens sometime today - the electricity has been wired up so that they can keep warm at night in the new pen.