Should I follow in the footsteps of Noah?

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Garden Bunny
The most fearless wild rabbit I have ever come across!

The last few days have seen rain, and more rain. The field was totally flooded. The field pond went from empty to full in the course of a couple of days. The leaking garden pond is almost full. Not seen such high levels for years. This rain has added to a water main leaking outside one of our neighbours since at least March. I did wonder why one of our field gateways had been damp during the summer. The water apparently flowed to her ménage, which is well drained, and then through the ménage land-drains to the gateway. Thankfully Thames Water have at last fixed the leak. This though is worthy of its own story.

The rain has again attracted the Little Egret, and flocks of gulls, who suddenly descend on the field as if it were the seashore. If I wanted a house by the sea I would not have bought a house which is probably as far away from the coast as you can get in the UK. Not only do we have these coastal birds visiting us, we now have Garden Bunny. Such a fearless animal sitting eating our grass for most of the day, totally ignoring us as we walk around the house & garden, and the tractor which came into the garden to cut the hedges. One worry is that Rosemary saw some baby bunnies the other day.

Ascott House

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Ascott House

National Trust house between Wing and Leighton Buzzard

Desperate to take the new automobile out for a drive, we hit upon a visit to the National Trust property, Ascott House. The interior of the house was not open, but the gardens were. We had booked our visit time and managed to arrive late. Little issues such as setting the house alarm off as we left caused a delay. As is always the case, the traffic then becomes intense, so we could not get back on the road, and when we did we became stuck behind farm vehicles. It is harvest time.

No matter we arrived and were surprised at the number of people visiting, making it difficult to get those people free pictures of the gardens. Maybe I should do street photography where people are the star of that genre of photography. Not to worry, the garden was amazing, despite it being past its best. Lovely and warm, the sun was shining. As the day wore on it did become a little bit hazy.

I have been to this house before, probably in the last century. Rosemary visited with some friends just over a month ago. She wanted to show me around these fabulous gardens. Some very interesting fountains and some unusual ponds and displays in the Lynn Garden. The Lynn Garden is not your traditional garden, it definitely would be a fun garden to be in. I thing rugrats would definitly appreciate the large grassy earth mounds. Thankfully they were absent, back at school.

Sad to see all the yellow leaves on the chestnut trees, not autumn colours, but diseased leaves.

Nice to see a couple looking at our new car as we walked back. Didn’t think I would become a car bore.

Another one bites the dust

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Kestrel

This Kestrel has been spotted 9 times feeding from our feeder. How many more birds it has taken without us seeing is anyone’s guess. It is so pretty, but so our are finches and blue tits! Nature is arguably cruel, and I suppose they have to feed, as we similarily eat those pretty lambs I took pictures of at the beginning of lockdown. Shame I can’t quite read the number on his ring.

Little Egret

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The recent torrential rain has ended summer and attracted a Little Egret. The Little Egret could be seen wading around the field pulling up worms for breakfast. The Little Egret was large, so we thought we were lucky and had a Great Egret. Alas, beak, legs and feet show it to be a Little Egret, a far more common variety.

Wildlife

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Garden Life

Life can be tough. This year we have seen masses of Goldfinch, at the same time there have been Magpies, Sparrowhawks and Kestrels, all feeding on the smaller birds. Most days there are piles of feathers around the garden and field where some bird has met its maker. While this Kestrel was feeding, the Goldfinch were still at their Niger seed.

Comet NEOWISE

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Cloudless evening on Monday so I attempted to photograph NEOWISE. The problem I had was with my knowledge of the camera. I didn’t know where infinity was on the lens scale. Should it be hard up against the stop, on the infinity mark or some other position? Does it change with different zoom? During daylight this morning I discovered it was significantly different, more on the 300-meter distance, and does change with focal lengths. It is difficult to focus through the viewfinder when there is just black. No help from the moon to act as a focusing aid, because it was a new moon. So alas my pictures could be sharper. Possibly I should have tried focusing on the planets of Jupiter and Saturn which were very bright, close together and towards the South East.

The first photograph, where you can see the trees, was taken on my mobile phone. With a little imagination, you can see the comet trail point directly upwards. The second photograph was taken with the DSLR, zoomed and cropped to the comet.

The tail of the comet was just visible with the naked eye, but only if you knew where to look and had spotted it with binoculars. I was looking after 11 pm. Any earlier and the sky was too bright, leave it later and I believe the comet was nearer the horizon. When we saw the comet, it was towards the North West, halfway between the horizon and star called Dubhe in The Plough constellation. Dubhe is one of two pointer stars used to locate Polaris.

R and I had made a previous attempt by getting up at 3.30 in the morning, alas it was cloudy on the horizon, we looked in the wrong direction, and it was getting very bright at that time of the morning. Excellent view of Venus, it is now viewable in the morning.

International Space Station

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By chance we saw the International Space Station fly over us on Sunday night. On the Monday and Tuesday I took to taking photographs of it. The first ones taken on Monday were short 30 second exposures. The last photograph taken on Tuesday at 23.45 was for the full duration of the visible portion of the flight. Unfortunately camera was not pointing quite the correct way, so we don’t see it fade out.

International Space Station
International Space Station
International Space Station
International Space Station
International Space Station
International Space Station

 

Lockdown Walk

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A walk through Ham Wood and then back up to Grendon Underwood and across the fields home. The sun was setting, so some warm images. The Spring flowers were over, so what remained of the flowers were a bit straggly, though they still looked nice.

Lockdown Birds

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Sitting at home, outside, drinking our G&Ts, you must have your camera at the ready. There is the Heron visiting our neighbours’ pond. There it is sitting looking ungainly at the top of a tree. The greenfinches, constantly fighting, and the young bird being looked after by its parents. All of this in view while you are sipping your Gin and Tonic.

Heron
Heron
Young Greenfinch
Greenfinch on the feeder
King of the castle
Greenfinch
Heron