Environment, Love of Nature, Natural History, Walks

Winter mist at wraysbury lakes

Morning sun through the mist over the Colne Brook
Goldeneyes, winter ducks here, down from the far north where they breed. The two black-and-white males in the centre are bobbing their heads (and throwing them over their backs, not shown), a small echo of their courtship display.

Among the wonderful moments on this walk: a heron gave its cronking call and flapped slow over the water; a plane passed behind three cormorants drying their wings, perched on the branches of a dead tree; a group of goldeneyes panicked and pattered across the lake, gaining speed for takeoff, giving their high-pitched call, the waves sparkling in the slanting sunshine; a song thrush tentatively singing its repeated music; a solitary fieldfare.

Teasels and wet thornbushes glistening in the low sun