It was indeed a day spent almost entirely at home — and on such days, it is always helpful when one of the local herons turns up and looks photogenic. This isn’t the same one as has appeared multiple times — the colouring is different. And I like it’s slightly misplaced feather right on its crown.
A male and female blackbird harvest a rare bounty in winter: the crab apples (I guess) on the tree at the bottom of Keighley Road. Not easy to get sharp on a dull grey day with all those twigs to confuse the focus, but it’ll do.
Why head west? Why not south? Well, the valley runs east-west here so I guess they were trying to work out the best route. Anyway I think Canada geese (which these are — Branta canadensis) live in the UK year-round these days, so maybe they were just commuting up-valley to Todmorden.
On how many otherwise boring and photograph-free days has a heron down on the river saved the blog post. Today was one of those days. Handsome beasts, always…. and damn, are they patient.
A beautiful, sunny day today, a welcome change from the grey crud we have otherwise had for some weeks (it feels like that anyway). To distract from the prevalent Christmas theme, here’s a curlew walking on the sands at high tide. I like this shot not only for the bird itself but the strange bubbles all around it, probably caused by some kind of marine life only infrequently covered by water; most of the time this bit of the world will be sand.
This could be the first confirmed death of an organism to be documented on the blog: unlike this bumblebee, the wasp didn’t get away. Paralysed, wrapped in unbreakable bonds and dragged away to some dark corner where its captor will slowly suck its juices out over the next couple of days. I hope your ending is not as harsh as that. Nor mine, come to that.
Unconnected to any other aspect of my life, I briefly encountered this gorgeous creature today. We flirted. I raised the camera. He grinned… look, you can see him grinning… the shot was taken, we parted ways. Skedaddle is his name, it seems — for how he moves when placed on a smooth wooden floor, and faced with the cats who also live in his house.
I try when I can to make these photos somehow epitomise the day, but this is an exception. I spent almost the whole day in a room interviewing job applicants. This is just a shot grabbed out of my office window, in one of the few bursts of light on this otherwise grey November Monday. But I like these natural feather dusters, Cortaderia selloana or pampas grass. Very 1970s. Then again so’s the building I work in.
This picture needs some explanation. For the second time in a few weeks I visited the Etihad stadium, home of Manchester City, for a football match (there were reasons). While watching City do what they usually do, that is, barely break sweat but win easily, it was easy to be distracted in the first half by the activities of what appeared to be a hawk, or kestrel, that had taken up residence in the roof and kept flying between two of the stands. At one point it clearly dropped something that it was holding in its claws yet still managed to swoop down and catch the prey before it hit the ground (and or landed on someone in row F). I just about managed to capture it here in flight, even if it is not very definable. It may not be all that good a photo but it is still more interesting than the night’s football.
Postscript: As my Facebook friend Margaret pointed out after I posted this, the bird may well have been on professional duty; birds of prey are a good way of keeping the pigeon and other pest population down in a stadium like this.
9am and I’m at the station on the way to work. Whatever this robin’s plans were for the day, he seemed happy enough about it, his song being the soundtrack to the wait for the 09:06. A shame he wasn’t perched in the sunshine but never mind.
