Wray Cleave / Pepperdon 3rd Dec '08

With the luxury of not a great deal of work to do today, I headed out to have a look round Na's patch and see what was lurking there. I stopped off at the sewage works in case the Yellow-browed W. was still lurking, but no sign again. Oh well. Plenty time yet for it to reappear.

I've not visited one side of Na's favoured stamping ground, so took the opportunity of a combination of bright crisp sunshine and frosty weather to skate over the deep mix of cowshit and mud churned up before the stiles. Nice. The time of year and the weather argued against there being many birds there, and that was the case: a few Marsh Tits sneezing at me, the odd Treecreeper and Nuthatch sidling across the branches and a nice bright Yellowhammer were the highlights, with a standard backing cast of Blue, Great and Coal Tits, Redwing, Blackbird, Chaffinch... draw your own conclusions! Flushed a couple of Roe Deer and a scumbag squirrel (sorry, cute Grey Squirrel, if you prefer - why you'd want to, I don't know). The air was a tad hazy for decent landscape photos - and my preferred camera seems to have given up the ghost. Still, below are some offerings from the day:

A bit of frost abstract from the windscreen, before I trashed it.

Proper feather patterns last night, which is nice!

The view towards Morton' from the track leading to Wray Cleave woods

Not as dramatic as the abandoned machinery in Liberia, but an abandoned 'dozer made a nice colour contrast with the trees and the field behind.