Although a chillier day today than it has been, I think we can still say that spring is here. Not sure whether these two were feeding themselves, or the ducks in the river below their feet (and cropped out of shot), but either way the title still applies. Why the black and white? Why not? Sometimes the colours just don’t work out so well.
It’s been a VERY uneventful few days. At least this guy gave me something unusual to depict; the Boxing Day floods have provoked some vague dredging of the Hebden Water. Dredging is fine, but it just pushes the flooding downstream; what one really needs is attention to how fast the rainwater falls off the watershed, prompting (ideally) the planting of trees and the development of other facilities that keep the water uphill rather than pushing it down the valleys, only that doesn’t meet the needs of rich landowners.
It could be sharper and it ain’t gonna win any wildlife photography contests, but I’m glad this baby was fishing in the river this morning when I went shopping down in the town, because otherwise I was home all day working and there was nothing to see…. But herons are always good for a shot. Handsome creatures. That neck-spring-and-dagger-beak combination must be a fish’s worst nightmare.
This platform over the Hebden Water has always been there, at least since I’ve been living here. But recently a project began that seemed to be building on it. One story was that this was to be car parking, but I’ve also heard that there was going to be a house built on it. Either way, the state it is in now reflects what happened on December 26th, in the floods, when the river peaked above the surface of the platform, leaving it smashed up and littered with debris (much of which has since been cleared).
The point is that this is exactly the kind of situation where you might think planning permission had been granted without due consideration. Flooding, and damage from flooding, isn’t just about heavy rainfall — it’s also about damn-fool planning. At least this happened before someone blithely bought and moved into this putative house. But who knows, perhaps the project has not yet been abandoned.
A lot of rain overnight, and the Hebden Water was today as high as I have seen it since the floods of June/July 2012. But most — if not absolutely all — of the town was spared damage; the rain stopped just in time. Let’s hope there isn’t more before it has had time to go down a bit.
The pigeon/duck conflict is one of the great unseen wars. Where the river comes through the town, where waterfowl meets urban scavenger, the two species battle for the prime pickings from the humans. The pigeons sent an emissary to demand more territory, but the ducks, insistent that they were there first, just ain’t talking.
Easter Monday, so we had the annual Duck Race down the Hebden Water. If you don’t know what that is, there is no point explaining it. This shot doesn’t do justice to the crowds watching it — but who cares, it epitomised my day, and that is the point of this blog.
As a contrast to the fighting poultry of a few days ago, here, a much more serene couple. Little to see today, a second day in a row spent mostly working at home with grey light — declining daylight and a longish zoom account for this shot’s lack of focus.
Pictured on the Hebden Water this afternoon. A sunny day but a damn cold one, certainly the coldest so far in 2014.
St. Andrew’s Day, and a beautiful morning. This is the walkway down by the Hebden Water in town. I like the lines of the building, the trees in the background and the random arrangement of café paraphernalia waiting to see if any customers realised it was quite warm enough to sit outside despite it being the last day of November.
Being 42 