There haven’t been many animals on here lately so let’s rectify that. If anyone living toward the top of Highfield Crescent was getting any reception problems with their satellite signal this afternoon, here’s why.
I sympathise. I’m sure we’ve all been there.
Spent a little while today watching this bird (probably a jackdaw although I have given up trying to identify these species accurately) working out how it could get at the bounty inside this rubbish skip with its marginally open lid. This was the moment of triumph.
Anthropomorphism: the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to an animal or object. Hard to avoid, particularly if you are the maker of a Disney movie. But I still say this fly looks proud enough to me. And like it’s enjoying the sunshine.
Another one of these time-of-year things, annual photographic events — you’ve seen this flower (wood cranesbill) before, not to mention insects plunging themselves within, to extract the bounty.
Continuing to clear the allotment, I find this cobweb behind the most concealed of our collection of water butts. I like its dappling by sunlight and the way that tiny flower has fallen onto and nestled into it, pushing down delicately, like it’s a meniscus or the most fragile of hammocks one can imagine.
The garden is a riot of vegetation; only most of it is growing in places it shouldn’t, the consequence of a month of neglect. A weekend of agricultural labour looms. Attractive as it is this unidentified plant will be categorised as weed; its days are numbered.
The weather may not have been all that great for us humans but I doubt a sheep judges their quality of life with respect to much more than the food spread out around them — and in that regard, this sheep clearly has things very fine indeed, going by the smile on its face. Taken on the very edge of the Lake District, the hill of Cunswick Scar, near Kendal.
Dropping down from Sergeant Man to Tarn Crag, in Easdale in the Lake District, I saw ahead a small herd of young deer, about three hundred yards ahead. I stopped to get the camera out. They stopped and looked at me for a while; I mean, look at this picture, they clearly know I’m there. They sized me up. I sized them up. Got a few shots. Then off they went, to do whatever they do during the daytime, and I carried on my way. Everyone was satisfied with the transaction I think.
As has happened before, an otherwise dull day at home was photographically enlivened by visiting the cave spiders in the shed. Meta menardi is about the largest species of spider you will find in Great Britain and we have at least four of them happily living out their lives downstairs. I love the little hairs on its legs. But, OK, I probably wouldn’t want one scampering over my face or anything.
Being 42 