New Digs - can ya dig it?

So I have now officially moved into what is to be (hopefully) my last abode whilst I'm in Jersey. It's called The Stables and it's basically a house on a riding stables property where students/keepers from Durrell live. It's a 10 minute walk to work each morning, I can see pretty horsies from my bedroom window, I get a bunk bed, the landlady is nice and best of all I get to move in with my good friend Lorna :) yays all round :)  

 

Other exciting news this week is that a baby Gorilla was born yesterday morning to Kahili and Badongo and is our first gorilla birth at Durrell for many years - I went and saw them yesterday and the baby is soooo cute !!!



Also, mum and dad I think you'd be super proud of me cause I also spent some time the other day in the lab learning form Lorna - mostly doing bioveterinary science - so we did gram stains, faecal flotations, some parasitology and bacteriology of samples and yesterday I helped separate out plasma from blood samples. The lab smells like my childhood- it's awesome :) :)

Lorna looking at the sample

Bacilli found on a Chough gram stain

Lorna let me keep it :) :) 

Bye for now,

xxKim

Battle of Britain Air Display

Hi All :)

I've just returned home from a really cool event which happens annually here in Jersey - the Jersey International Air Display. Celebrating it's 50th year this year, there is both a static and an aerial display of warbirds, modern military aircraft, helicopters and the famous RAF aerial acrobatics team The Red Arrows.
I didn't really know what to expect at the display, having never been to an airshow before (with the exception of the Redbull Air Race which totally doesn't count) but I was really, really impressed with the way it was run and the displays that they had. I was most interested in the and they had a Lancaster bomber and a Spitfire which were absolutely wonderful - you really can't understand what they're like until you see them in action and the pilots did a fantastic job.
Personally, I thought it was incredible to see them flying over the bay and Elizabeth Castle and it really helped me to viualise what it could have been like during the war to hear the sound of those planes going past and to know what they meant. They had speakers set up all along the bay with commentary and just before they came out they played the famous wartime speech by Winston Churchill and explained that while more German planes were actually shot down by Hurricanes than by Spitfires the Spitfire became a symbol of hope to the British people and made them believe that with the weapons and the soliders that they had that it was possible to win the war.

The RAF Spitfire

The Avro Lancaster - the most numerous and successful bomber of those used in WW2 and the only one still flying today.

The display also featured newer planes including the RAF Hawk, flown by the Red Arrows, which also did a solo display, and the Saab Viggen, Saab Tunnan and Saab 105, all new planes from the Swedish Airforce. While these aircraft aren't exactly my cup of tea there was no denying the skill involved in flying them and the pilots did some amazing things which made me nervous just watching them! The Saab planes all flew into the main display area in formation - which apparently has never been done before at an airshow and is very impressive - I guess since they're all different aircraft that's particularly difficult? or something? I don't know I'm not an expert but everyone sounded super impressed by it and it looked pretty darn cool :)

The Viggen on the left, the 105 on top and the Tunnan in front

The Hawk

The other super awesome display they had was a Broussard aircraft - a large french utility plane, which had a tiny electric plane, called a Cri Cri, attached to the top of it. The planes flew together for a couple of loops around the bay and then the smaller plane took off from on top of the other one! crazy! It was the first time this has been done in Britain since 1939. Awesome.


The Broussard and the Cri Cri still attached (the little line at the top the Cri Cri's tail

Be free !!!

And finally, the moment most people had been waiting for The Red Arrows closed the show with some of the best flying I have ever seen in my life, including that which I've seen on TV. The Red Arrows are the Acrobatic Squad of the RAF and are used for fly-overs and displays in almost all major ceremonies in Great Britain including the Jubilee celebrations and the Olympic Ceremony. They normally fly in a formation with 9 aircraft however last year, sadly, they lost two members of the team in two unrelated accidents and have been flying with seven aircraft for this season.

 

I was only there for a couple of hours but it was definitely worth going to and I really enjoyed it - it's really impossible to understand the skill of those pilots until you see them in action cause you just can't comprehend how fast, loud and high they are until you see it. So I'm gonna go watch Topgun but I'll leave you with the obligatory adorable animal pictures I know you all want to see :)

Otto the bat - and he's happy to see you!

Logan and the as-yet-unnamed Golden Lion baby :)

 

 

Ta Ta xx

Jersey Live

Yo !

So we're going to have to skip a little bit...well, a lot actually. sorry,currently I'm only able to access the internet if I use someone elses computer which means I don't have all my photos - however, eventually I'll put up the photos from the rest of the trip with mum and from Battle of the Flowers and various other happenings - you can always check for photos on my facebook - there's definitely BoF photos and other stuff up there :) But for now I can talk about more recent things where the photos are still on my camera/phone - like Jersey Live !

Jersey Live, for those who don't know, is a music festival held every year on a farm here in Jersey over the weekend and every year Durrell gets volunteers to go there and collect cans for their Cans for Corridors scheme - an incredibly awesome project where aluminium cans are recycled and the money goes towards setting up local farming co-ops to help the landless people of Brazil get out of poverty by planting native trees to form corridors of forest between habitat fragments where the Black Lion Tamarins live - that way they can move between fragments increasing genetic mixing and helping the populations become more stable :) So basically I got into a music festival for free, got free food and had a lot of fun -for free. It was pretty much the best thing ever. We ended up getting enough cans in those two days to plant over 300 trees so I think we did pretty dang well and we got to see some amazing bands - including Rizzlekicks, Alex Clare, Noel Gallagher (though he wasn't that great) and Chase and Status.

A whole bunch of students and people from work went, both as volunteers and just as festival-goers and there were several different stages and bars, fairground rides, a food village and stalls and face painting :) Also, apparantly we were on the news when they did a bit about the festival so I'm kind of famous :)





One of the more exciting things to happen was that a spider crawled out of Noel Gallaghers guitar cases and they called upon the resident Durrell "experts" (i.e. my friend Rachel who is a herpetology (frogs and reptiles) and vet microbiology student - haha) to identify it. we used google. we didn't find out what it was - they took it back to Durrell and as it turns out its a 6-eyed spider found throughout Europe - but there was a danger it was from one of the more exotic places Noel Gallagher has toured recently so it was important to check. The story has made it into the Daily Mail, the Sun and even local TV news as well - Matt, the head of |Herps even got a call from LA asking about it and someone wanted to buy the spider!!!

Anyway, here are some photos to try and convey the atmosphere and the fun that was had by all :)

xxKim