Category: non human animals
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Heron
Mmm, if you looked at the top image and went, that’s not a heron, well done! I think the shot below is perhaps the best photograph I’ve taken in a long time. As I walked up from the reed beds that line the edge of the River Severn I spooked this heron, and it flew…
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Sumer is i-cumin in
It’s struggling, but the summer is coming… I can’t remember when winter was last this long, and spring so half hearted, but you have to take what comes, eh. All those years of talking about impending climate chaos and when it comes it’s all so surprising… The bee in the top shot is hanging from…
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Pics for the day
Just remember, if you’re going to play around with the chicks, make sure mum isn’t close by… Greylag Goose chicks at WWT Slimbridge today, on a very wet morning. Of course it was raining; it was a Bank Holiday in Britain! But while we’re on the subject of chicks… the robin chicks whose parents recklessly…
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Frogal Lengths
I spotted this frog bravely if futily guarding a section of the main pond. There’s spawn now in the smaller pond, but if they decide to spread any in here it will only add a little xtra tastiness to the diet of the patrolling koi and other pond fish. I decided to take substantially the…
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Greylag and Bewicks over the Severn
I’m so very grateful to be living so close to the river Severn, with all the sights she offers. Brown and fearsomely tidal, she is home to so many creatures. Here are a couple of shots from a walk the other day. The ancestor of most domestic geese, the greylag is the largest and bulkiest…
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Water Rail
Water Rails are shy birds, and I was delighted to see one emerge from the reedbeds and cautiously dig around for breakfast… Not the first time of seeing for me, but this time it came right out and had a swim in the very flooded wetlands around Slimbridge WWT. It looks very diffferent in swim…
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Winter arrives
The summer seemed unending, and it felt almost inconceivable that we might slip back into winter, but the planet’s tilt will not be ignored no matter how much carbon we throw into the air. Winter is here. I woke to -6ºC this morning, and a bright crisp frost under the bluest sky. The village lay…
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The Royal Family
Another lovely day, filled with sunny walks on dappled tow-paths and pubs with pies and pints a-plenty. And Kingfishers! I’ve done a page of kingfishers before but one is never enough to capture the irridescence of these marvellous predators. And this time I’ve got both the male and the female. I’m particularly pleased with the…
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Living with madness
A provocative title – and possibly a trigger phrase for some, for which I apologise – but that’s what we seem to be doing in the UK. Ruled by an elite which is so totally disconnected with those it presumes to govern that it doesn’t even try to cover up the ridiculous, aberrant, contradictory and…
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Chicken-napping!
You never know how the day is going to turn out. In between showers, Miss and I take the opportunity to go for a walk around the village, as you do. Less than quarter of a mile into the walk we smile a “good afternoon” at a lady coming towards us (we still smile and…