May 28-30 2010

Bible & Birds Weekend

A group of people with a passion for birds and a passion for the scriptures got together at the St Cuthbert's Centre at the end of May for a weekend led by Monkseaton minister David Peel and John Proctor, John Proctor, New Testament lecturer at Westminster, Cambridge. This was a follow-up to Faith & Feathers, held first in the autumn of 2008, and such a success that it wsa repeated the following year. And once again sufficient numbers came from all over the country to fill Marygate House.

Worship over the weekend was in the hands of the two leaders and St Cuthbert's Centre Director Barry Hutchinson. John Proctor provided challenging Bible studies on the theme of the sea, and helped us hear the great creation Psalm 104 in a new and lively way reflecting the creation stories of Genesis.

And then there were the birds.... Fewer on Holy Island than we were used to seeing in the autumn, but the two trips off the Island more than made up for that. On the Saturday morning we drove to the Tern Colony at the Long Nanny, near Beadnell where we had close-up sightings of Arctic, Sandwich and Little Terns, as well as the ringed plovers who were nesting among them. And then there was the Aah! factor reserved for the family of shelducks we saw on the way back to the carpark.

Back on the Island just before the tide covered the causeway, our second trip of the day was by sea. The dire weather forecast was proved wrong, and the twenty intrepid sailors suffered no more than a little dampness as the Billy Shiel's boat took us straight out to the Longstone Lighthouse and then threaded its way back through the Outer and Inner Farne Islands surrounded by birds all the way - puffins and guillemots and razorbills, kittiwakes and other gulls, cormorants and shags and so much more, not forgetting of course Cuthbert's favourite: the eider duck.