Very Lou Reed

Perfect Day’s do not come much more perfect than this. There hasn’t been even a hint of a cloud in the sky from dawn ‘til dusk and the unbroken sunshine has not been accompanied by any chill wind. In fact, there was very little wind at all. Today was cloudless, shirt sleeve weather – utter bliss.

IMG_8523_GSW The local wildlife seemed to be enjoying the conditions, too, starting with a Great Spotted Woodpecker visiting us for breakfast. Shooting through a perspex window doesn’t help but it looks reasonable with a little contrast and colour adjustment. 😉

IMG_9570_Wood_Anemone Having put our winter-weary legs through a 27ml/43km slog yesterday, our muscles were feeling the effects today so we decided to give them a bit of a rest by wandering down to a hostelry in Sway for a bite of lunch. It’s about 4 miles there and back. Francine came expecting a bit of a spring flower fest but has been a little disappointed thus far. However, on the way she did spot our first Wood Anemone of the season.

At the pub, we munched some very enjoyable whitebait while watching what I assume was some kind of survey plane flying very straight lines back and forth in the crystal clear sky. Each pass was just a little displaced from the previous track so I believe it was taking aerial photographs in strips. Maybe our lunch will end up on Google Earth. 🙂

IMG_8529_Newt Since neither of us is very good at sitting doing nothing, even in stunning weather, the later afternoon called for a swift check on the wildlife at Tiptoe. The water is very clear now and we spotted some kind of newt lurking on the bottom. The choices are limited, there being but three British newts but I don’t know which this is. The water is a little more difficult to correct for – should’ve used the polarising filter but I was too hurried– so the shot is a little murky but it’s worth sharing.

IMG_8528_Pond_Skaters We snapped several Pond Skaters, too. It’s amazing how little I seem to notice when concentrating on getting a shot. I was particularly surprised to find, when loading the pictures on a the computer, that one Pond Skater was actually a mating couple of Pond Skaters. Now how did I miss that?

Posted in 2011 New Forest Tagged with: , , , , ,

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