For our March 2024 meeting, our season finale for the 23/24 programme year, we welcome Tonya and three of her gorgeous owls from HOOT with Me CIC to our meeting.
Tonya introduced us to Ethel the Little Owl, Arthur the Tawny Owl, and Johnny the Barn Owl. Hoot with Me is a conservation charity keen to educate others about wildlife and what we can do to make life better for our feathered friends. We learned all sorts of facts about owls during a 40 minute talk, then anyone who wanted to could have a go at holding an owl on the glove. Here are just a few of the fascinating things we learned. Owls are silent when they fly, their feathers have a serrated edge which means they don’t create turbulence.If an owl were in a space the size of a football pitch, they would be able to hear a mouse’s heart beating. Their facial disk operates like a satellite dish and enables them to tune into sounds, and the strip down the middle of their face enables their ears to hear independently of each other. Little Owls come out during the day, Barn Owls and Tawny Owls are nocturnal. All owls except Barn Owls are waterproof. Tawny Owls are monogamous - Arthur is married to Beryl. Females tend to be larger than males. The male hunts for both of them once the female starts incubating eggs. Eggs are laid several days apart, germination takes 30 days, so they also hatch at different times. They tend to fledge at about 7 weeks, and are fully grown at 12 weeks but will remain with their parents for up to 2 years. Tawny Owls like a nice hollow tree or a hole to nes in. Barn Owls like old buildings, Little Owls nest lower down in trees, or in holes in the ground. Owls have three eyelids, one to blink, one to sleep, one to clean & protect the eye. Owls have four toes at the front and one at the back and whiskers on their feet so if they drop their prey, they can feel where it is. Their ‘lock grip’ grip is as strong as a human bite. It takes 9-13 hours to digest their food and regurgitate the waste in a pellet, but they poo every 8-9 minutes. This was widely voted to be one of our BEST meetings ever. Everyone was absolutely enthralled, and one member thought it quite simply the best birthday evening out ever and was treated to a rendition of Happy Birthday to you.
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February is our Annual General Meeting (AGM) with President Vicki and Secretary Kate at the top table giving their reports for the year. Gillian did her Treasurer report. After 4.5 years of keeping us all in order with her incredible organisation skills, Kate is stepping down from her position as secretary.
After the AGM part of the meeting, everyone got crafty with green felt hearts, swatches of fabric and fabric pens to decorate the 87 fabric bags made by members for the WI's annual #showthelove campaign where we draw attention to climate change issues. And this year, we thought it a great idea to #showthelove by making something that's less likely to end up in landfill, and by donating our green-heart decorated fabric bags to the local food bank, some of which we stuffed full of goodies. Many people turn up at the food bank in a desperate state, with no thought as to how they're going to transport their items home, so our donation is going to make lots of people's lives just that bit easier when they've got a lovely bag to transport their food home in. We always kick off the year with a healthy debate about the National WI resolutions. This is our opportunity to vote for the resolution upon which we feel the WI will have the most impact, or which we feel is most important for the WI to campaign on.
In the past these have been some interesting and eye opening discussions, We often arrive having a pretty clear idea about which resolution we feel most strongly about but after hearing from our members, minds are often swayed. It can be helpful to have quick read up on each of the resolutions before the meeting - the options for this year's resolutions are as follows: Dental Health Matters There is a chronic shortage of NHS Dentists and people are suffering health issues as a result. The NFWI calls on the Government to increase investment in the training and retention of dentists and to review the current inadequate NHS contracts in order to ensure everyone can access an NHS dentist wherever they live. Impacts of poor housing conditions Poor housing can have a deleterious effect on human health and wellbeing, safety and quality of life and can disproportionately affect the most vulnerable groups in society. The NFWI calls on the UK Government to boost housing standards and regulations, increase funding for housing renovations, increase the supply of affordable and secure housing and strengthen collaboration with local authorities, housing associations and other relevant stakeholders to develop strategies that address local housing challenges. Say ‘no’ to gambling advertising Harm caused by excessive gambling is a global problem. Some countries are already addressing this by banning advertising. The NFWI calls on members, the government, regulators, the NHS, educationalists and gambling charities to work together towards achieving a complete ban on gambling advertising. This will reduce gambling harm, save the NHS money, protect family relationships and decrease the number of suicides, around 400 per annum at present. Improving Outcomes for Women in the Criminal Justice System There is an urgent need to radically reform decision-making in respect of women in the criminal justice system and in particular, pregnant women and women with children. We urge cross-government collaboration to deliver on the 2018 female offender strategy by setting goals, robust governance and performance measures to reduce the number of women who have committed non-violent offences from being imprisoned. There's nothing quite like a Christmas social, but here at Swallowtail WI we're pretty partial to a jigsaw race with our Christmas nibbles.
Our December meeting saw a seriously competitive evening of fun, laughter, festive treats, chit chat and focused jigsawing. Even for our competitive members. finishing a 500 piece jigsaw in just under 2 hours is a pretty tall order - so we invariably have to declare the team with the least left to do the winner. Everyone agreed that tree and the tinsel on the left was a fiendish section of jigsaw that definitely needed to be left til last. Laughter yoga is a funny old phenomenon.
One minute you're all staring at each other as you sit round in a circle, next you're doing all sorts of strange things, playing clapping games with your neighbour, pulling funny faces, shrugging your shoulders and laughing fit to bust. And then someone gets the giggles and you're all off, and next thing you know you've been laughing for almost an hour, having pulled some of the silliest faces you can remember since you were 7. It's all completely ridiculous and don't you feel better for it? We'd done laughter yoga once before, the session before we had to lockdown together with the rest of the UK for Covid, and it had been a brilliant session in times of uncertainty. Just as much fun 3 years later! An incredible insight into the world of a Met Police forensic handwriting expert.
Steve got us all writing at speed, threatening imaginary post-masters with our guns and ransom notes, demanding £10,000 in £20 notes, before teaching us what to look for when interrogating the structure of handwriting. From down strokes to cross strokes, to the order in which you add your horizontal lines to your vertical ones - it was absolutely fascinating. From now on we'll all be minding our Es, Ks and Gs when it comes to scrutinising anyone's handwriting and looking for the elusive 3% of people who only write their Es and their Gs in a certain manner Finally we analysed our signatures and a few members confessed to being a dab hand at forging their parent's on homework books and cheques for school trips when we were younger... David came to talk to us about Medical Detection Dogs and gave us a fascinating insight into how dogs are helping create AI for the future to enable detection of illnesses by potentially just breathing into our smart phones.
Medical Detection Dogs can also spot cancer, Parkinsons and Covid19 as well as support people's independence with detection of disorders such as PoTS (Postural Tachycardia Syndrome) and epilepsy meaning people can live more independently and fuller lives. Sometimes it's the spontaneous meetings that turn out to be the best fun, and that's what happened in August with our tasting session.
From guessing which oil came from where and which oil cost most money, to identifying the saltiest or sweetest popcorn; from trying to work out what the incredibly random crisp flavours tasted of, to working out the cocoa percentage and the country of origin for the chocolate, our taste buds had their work cut out! And then on to the 5 mystery cake ingredient session ... the random ingredients turned out to be tomato soup, prunes, mashed potatoes, yogurt and mayonnaise! No-one wanted the chocolate and prune recipe as it was quite revolting! The chocolate mayonnaise cake was one from Lynn's kitchen adventures. Tomato soup cake can be found in many guises Gillian's mashed potato lemon drizzle is an old recipe from a magazine, but one I've made can also be found online And the lemon yogurt cake has proven tricky to find an equivalent online recipe for as it's also from an old magazine, but if you Google 'lemon yogurt cake' there are several recipes to choose from. We love nature at Swallowtails, and our speaker in July from the Norwich Swift Network came to teach us all about swifts.
Having learned all about these incredible birds, we went outside to see if we could spot some flying around. And now we knew what to look for, we saw numerous swifts swooping around the field near our venue. Having learned about how new roof technology is really impacting swift nesting patterns, as they come back to nest in the place where they were born year after year, lots of members pledged to get a swift box. Sarah from Boho Loves joined us for a fun and chatty craft session making macramé key rings.
Everyone got the hang of it pretty quickly, and produced a fabulous keyring. Some members kept theirs, some gifted them to us to sell at our stall at the Sprowston Fete in July as part of our fundraising venture. |
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