Special places

 

What can this be?  We pass several of these on the way to our chosen parking place to start our daily walk for exercise under lockdown.

If we are lucky, as we were today, we see at least a few of these trotting about or grazing at the edge of the woodlands.

In the heat of summer, now long gone, we discovered this pool, spring-fed and so always full, unlike other watering holes which simply dried up and disappeared.  Then, we sat and watched as several varieties of dragonfly - ruddy darters and Imperators - hovered over the water.  One day we were privileged to see a kingfisher on patrol.  For three days he was resident at the poolside and then moved on. 

 Yesterday we were delighted to see a grey wagtail making the place his own.  He hopped up and down branches, hovered awkwardly down on to the leaf layer on the water, then took a leisurely preen, quite oblivious to our presence on the bank.  He is there in that picture.

Can you see him now - he's right in the centre, well-camouflaged because his plumage fits exactly with the leaves.

This was the weather first thing today - bright and sunny but with a hard frost and a chill to the air.

And what was that at the top of the page?  It was a sugar-beet mountain.  It has been the crop of choice around here this year, and will be taken off in huge lorries to Bury St Edmunds to be processed into sugar.  The churned up state of some of the fields has to be seen to be believed.