Dear All,

Well, here we go! The Maelstrom of December begins!

In all three of our churches, there is so much going on this Advent and Christmastide.

It all kicks off with the combined Christingle and St. Nicholas’ celebration for St. Michael’s and St. Margaret’s on the 2^nd December at Isfield, and then comes our eleventh Festival of Christmas Trees at Holy Cross from 7^th December – it’ll be the biggest and best we’ve done. It will be, as I tell everybody, like walking through Narnia. Hugely exciting and all help gratefully received!

For all other events, see the list later in the Link. All in all we have – above and beyond the normal Sunday Services – some twenty celebrations including Advent Carols, Lights of Love, Crib, Midnight Masses and some ten Carol Services. So much to join in with, relish and enjoy.

Nature Notes

I am in France again monitoring the autumn movements of birds in Aquitaine. We have seen chevrons of hundreds of European common cranes flying over and calling to each other as they go with little mechanical ‘purrs’. We have also had a grey heron in our garden, I think it was hunting the moles that punctuate the lawn with their hills of graded soil. This morning we saw a flock of about 40 northern lapwings landing in a ploughed field. These elegant waders often feed together on worms and other invertebrates and seeds, unusually for birds, they like to feed at night by moonlight.

There are currently large flocks of common chaffinches here forming winter foraging flocks, searching out seeds in the arable fields, especially those fields that were used to grow sunflowers. Chaffinches go into eclipse during the winter, which means that their colourful feathers are obscured by brown extensions rendering them cryptic in the brown winter fields. However, these brown feather tips get sloughed off in the spring revealing the pink breast and slate blue head.

Change of dates for the Open Door Services November and December 2018

The November Open Door Service will be held on Sunday 4^th to avoid clashing with the Remembrance Sunday Service

The December Open Door Service will be held on Sunday 16^th to avoid clashing with the Festival of Christmas Trees and to coincide with Christingle.