A low lies far to the west, with a slack trough over England and Wales. Ahead of the cold front, conditions are humid, warm and foggy. Sunday's high: 20C Thickness: 564dam (Data from MetO, NOAA and Wetterzentrale)

It's been a long time since I provided regular updates from the wolf centre. After an interesting day weather wise yesterday, here's a one-off old fashioned wolf update!

I set off yesterday morning amongst thick fog, which is really quite unusual down here in August. The forecast was for heavy thundery showers and longer spells of rain later in the day, as a cold front moved in from the west. As the sun's still quite strong at this time of year, I expected the fog would soon burn off - how wrong I was! It stayed foggy all the way to the wolf centre, with some heavy rain thrown in for good measure around Bracknell. It was raining (and still foggy) as I arrived at the wolf centre.

Mai, alpha female of the juvenile pack

It was a "starve night" on Saturday, meaning the wolves were all out and about. A few months back it was decided to feed the wolves in the morning rather than the evening, which means they're kept in their holding pens overnight normally. In typical style, my camera batteries died after just four shots - looks like new batteries are needed! I'd have to wait for others to arrive so that I could get indoors to collect some spare batteries... although in the meantime, it meant I could say "hello" to the wolves.

I started with the youngsters, who came up to the fence with a flurry of paws, tongues and wagging tails. They're as friendly as ever and it's hard to imagine them as being little black furballs you could hold in your hands! They're still not yet fully mature, as shown by the fact that the alphas haven't started scent-marking yet. Mosi is being more mischievous and just last week "tested" me by laying down repeatedly and looking up at me, as if to say "what are you going to do now, then?" She got bored of it after three or four times of being encouraged to move on, thus this opening round was mine. There will be plenty more to come! Torak, meanwhile, is his usual standoffish self although I was pleased to see him joining in the greeting yesterday morning.

Mai and Mosi, mischief personified!

After that, there was a quick "hello" to the Euros. Alba and Latea are perfectly happy to come up for a scratch, but woe betide Lunca if you try and make a fuss of her! Latea will make sure pretty quickly that Lunca isn't to get any attention. Earlier this year, Lunca mounted an attempt to take over leadership from Latea but it failed spectacularly. For the time being, anyway, they're relatively quiescent. Alba still hobbles around (having broken his neck a couple of years back), but he's still in good health other than that.

Duma with Kodiak behind, with a soppy expression! 

The older wolves have seen mixed fortunes. Kodiak is looking magnificent and you'd never guess he was 14 years old! Duma, now 10 years old, reminds me somewhat of Kenai in her old age, with a tail streaked with white. As for Dakota, she's been afflicted by cancer for the past year-and-a-bit. She looks somewhat dishevelled and has been retired from members' walks, but she still seems happy in herself. Both Dakota and Duma tried their best to lick me through the fence, with Duma coming up to me with tail wagging and ears flattened to the side, a friendly posture.

We've moved the walk to a different area of woodland and yesterday's walk was rather unusual due to the number of cancellations! One group pulled out as it was raining, asking whether we still ran the walks in the rain (and, of course, we do). The ironic thing is that the walk was dry throughout, with the rain holding off until the journey back to the wolf centre.

Dakota takes a yawn

It then chucked it down while the visitors went on a tour of the rest of the Trust and had their teas and coffees, not that that put them off!

When I left in the evening it was still raining and the intensity of the rain increased as I went through Bracknell, with torrential rain at times and sheets of water cascading over the motorway. As I went past Bracknell the rain suddenly stopped and it was pretty much dry the rest of the way home. Indeed, in Kent you'd wonder what all the fuss was about!

View to the west, 18:10z

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