18z yesterday - the ridge that brought the clear skies and inland frosts is moving away to the SE. Conditions at 6PM on Sunday: Thickness, 550dam, temperature 5C (dewpoint 1C). Wind from the west, 5 MPH. Today's high, 8C, last night's low -2C. (source: MetO, the 12z GFS and NOAA).

It was 3 degrees above freezing as I left Leysdown in the twilight and as I headed westwards the temperature steadily fell. By the time I crossed the Surrey border the temperature was hovering around freezing and it fell further to -1.5C as I drove into Berkshire. There was a fantastic hoar frost in Bracknell, with trees and bushes outlined in white. As the wolves had been left out overnight the gate was locked.

One locked gate - a sure sign the wolves were left out.

However, my arrival had been noticed by the denizens within - Alba and Lunca came over to investigate:

Shortly after that, Latea howled several times, sometimes with a really high pitched noise instead of her normal voice - sort of like the whine you get from TV sets, and something I doubt I'll be able to hear as I get older. Needless to say, that noise didn't come out on the recordings I made.

http://www.medvale.net/wolves/04-11-14/latea.wav

(It turns out that the TV whine (apparently the PAL carrier frequency) is 15.6KHz; Latea's "silent" howls start at 17KHz or so and go up from there. My Psion, which only goes up to 4KHz, doesn't stand a chance of recording it, sadly).

As it was still pretty early I headed out into the fields, drenched in the late Autumn sunshine. Despite air temperatures hovering around freezing it didn't feel that cold - had it been windy it would have been a different story! Despite the fact that it will be Winter in just over two weeks, there are still a few greens to be seen on the trees:

A view of the zenith from a field near Beenham.

Today was to be an open day for the locals, to see what we get up to at the Trust. As the other volunteers turned up we wondered how many visitors we'd get....

Once inside the Trust, I headed past the Euros on the way to the Obs Room. The wolves, curious as ever, came over to me:

With no visitors just yet, it gave time to tidy up the Obs Room, with dusting, polishing and the like. We were treated to some more howling while that was going on:

While we were chatting I learned of another nugget of info about the wolves - Latea's name should really be Lutea, after the town in Romania, but in the early days people started calling her Latea and the name stuck.

Eventually the first visitor turned up and from then until half three the place was quite busy, with groups of guests meeting and greeting the North American duo, Duma and Dakota, as well as touring the facilities and buying merchandise. The plan was just to being Duma out to meet people, but Dakota was having none of that!

Dakota.

After a while I went outside and chatted with the visitors, answering the usual questions (how many wolves do we have, etc). While we were talking Lunca decided to submit to Alba, showing a textbook dominance/submission pose. Note how Alba's tail is held high in the air (dominance), while Lunca's head and tail are down (submissive).

This is also as good a place as any to show you what it sounds like when Alba decides to be more aggressive - as with the last clip, this is an a-law encoded WAV, let me know if you have problems with it! Oh, it's also very loud.

http://www.medvale.net/wolves/04-11-14/dom.wav

Towards the end of the day I was treated to a rare sight - Colin, the only handler who can safely handly Kodiak, went into his enclosure and made a fuss of the old wolf. Despite his near constant growls, his tail was held low meaning that it was more for show than anything else.

(Kenai's in the background)

With the sun setting and the last of the guests leaving, it was time to head for home. I foolishly thought that the M25 closure wouldn't be too bad, and promptly got stuck in the queue just after 5 o'clock. In the next four hours I moved all of half a mile, before the traffic finally started moving normally. I hope that the six-hour journey I had is something I won't repeat soon!

In the words of that famous song about the M25:

You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well
This ain’t no upwardly mobile freeway
Oh no, this is the road
This is the road
This is the road to hell

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