Eco Church, Count on Nature Week
Eco Church
‘Churches Count on Nature Week’ runs from 8th – 16th June. This year we will be encouraging people to pause and notice the wildlife in our churchyard: insects visiting flowers; birds seen or heard; the plants and lesser creatures that make up the wonderful web of life around us. There will be a board in St Mary’s porch to write your sightings on, or you can use one of the recording sheets provided. There will also be identification cards and if you see something interesting and don’t know what it is, take a photo and send it to me rachel.42rr@btinternet.com and I will try and identify it for you. You never know, your picture may end up on the Reepham & Wensum Valley website (with your permission of course). If identifying wildlife is not your thing, just sit quietly on one of the churchyard benches, hopefully in the sun, and enjoy your peaceful, natural surroundings.
While we have had vast amounts of rain over the last few months, other parts of the world are experiencing droughts, extreme heat and wild fires yet again, or floods and devastating mud slides. Climate change has made the weather much more extreme and unpredictable, and this is also driving worldwide biodiversity loss. Not just the iconic species, such as Polar Bears and Snow Leopards but our local Swifts, House Martins and other migratory birds. Last year only about half the number of Swifts returned to Reepham than in previous years. This year that number has halved again, and with the wet weather we are having, there will be few flying insects for them to feed on. This will reduce their chances of fledging the next generation and local Swift numbers will fall even further. We all need to do what we can to boost insect numbers to help our beleaguered insectivorous birds: leave an area of your grass to grow long, leave the odd weed and don’t use pesticides. It will all help.
Notices
Sunday16thJune & 7th July Café Church is our more informal service starting at 10.30am in St Michael’s. There will be tea, coffee, juice, croissants and muffins, as well as papers to read from 10 o’clock.
‘It’s Your Move’ booklets. These are the booklets we give to the Year 6 pupils to help them prepare for the move to High School. This year there are 32 children in this group and the booklets are £1.83 each. If you would like to donate towards their cost, please give the money to Sue Cripps. Any excess will go into the Ann Munt children’s fund.