Nature Notes

Nature Notes:I had a walk alongside the river after the heavy snowfall a couple of weeks ago, and within a couple of hundred yards, startled a Brown Hare just six feet from me, near the bank, and as it shot off like a...Hare...I just managed to get a snap of it before it was a hundred yards away as fast as a Ferrari would have got there. Second pic shows its 'form', the term for a Hare's resting place, quite cosy beneath a covering of vegetation and snow, a nice little igloo, before yours truly disturbed him.
Spot the Swans in the next pic - can you see them, just before they slipped into the water? So well camouflaged - surely they evolved from Arctic regions and haven't caught up yet with green!

These next three pics show a Grey heron after it had seen me before I it. I love the way the long neck acts like an independant counter-weight, moving backwards and forwards as the rest of the body gains momentum.

It was really hard-going, walkng a couple of miles through thick snow - up to the top of the wellies, and over, as you can see here:

Some of the snow had a hard crust on it and I could walk ON it, but every few steps the boot would sink down 18 inches, as you can see in this next photo, and I was exhausted at the end. I did also attempt to cross over the river in the shallows....but not quite shallow enough...yes, you guessed it, a bootful of icey water later, I had an even more uncomfortable track back to the car.

This last pic shows the Winterwonderland view from the house looking down to my studio before my outside light went off, as the snow continued to fall - just love that long shadow of the Oak tree!