High l’eau from Blashford

Tern Hide car-park flooded again last night and if the weather prediction for tonight is accurate then it’s unlikely to be open again tomorrow.  Still the bright sunshine of earlier today gave us some wonderful sights of autumn colour against the deceptively tranquil appearance of the settlement pond. The following picture was taken from the path going to the Ivy South Hide.

Autumn colour behind settlement pond

Two things that aren’t  obvious from this picture is that the pond is actually being filled with water running into it from Ivy Lake – it looks so tranquil – and also there is a large raptor in the picture.

I’m personally immensely impressed by human ingenuity and the gadgets and equipment, especially digital camera technology, we now have at our disposal, thanks largely to a huge un-sung coterie of engineers and technologists, without whom this blog wouldn’t be possible and certainly wouldn’t be as colourful. As testament to the power of this I present a picture of the aforementioned raptor, a picture taken with the same camera from the same position using the same lens ( O.K. with a bit of digital ‘zooming’) et voila:-

Buzzard on far side of settlement pond!!

If you look closely at the first picture you may just make out a small lump on the most central tree.

One of the ‘little’ jobs we were attempting today was to clear some of the dirt that had lodged between the boards on a bridge over the Dockens water, it had caused the build up of a large puddle in the heavy rain yesterday. On the way there,  just beyond the Ivy South Hide the path continues on a boardwalk. I suspect there have been times when this has been under water, well today was nearly one of them,

Watery walk on the boardwalk anyone?

Bur of course without the damp we’re not so likely to see the fungi which at this time of year decorate the trees (mostly) with their various arrays of spectacular excrescences and garish colours. Don’t know what they are but they look great.

A bracket fungus

A yellow fungus

That’s probably quite enough on a wet theme so I’ll close with a couple of pictures of some of our regular visitors taking advantage of one of the new feeders that have been put up outside the Woodland Hide and elsewhere.

Coal tit

Great tit

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