Birds seen on the Lazy Otter walk

I have seen more Kingfishers this summer/autumn than ever before, but fewer Kestrels.   The Kingfisher was at a considerable distance and extremely well camouflaged in the reeds, but a photograph had to be attempted!

What a wonderful display of wing and tail feathers from a Kestrel when it is hovering.   This one was expending a considerable amount of time and energy hovering and quartering without finding anything to pounce onto.

House Sparrows are also much less common than they used to be;  in fact they are something of a rarity these days.

River Great Ouse near Stretham

Not for a long time have I walked from the Lazy Otter to Stretham Old Engine (a steam driven engine used to pump water off the land into the River Great Ouse) and back, but have done it a couple of times recently.

It was a misty morning and the images below record the landscape and farming activity.   There is quite a community of people living on boats at each end of the walk - different types of boats though.   I was interested to see the curios which were around the boats at the Stretham end.   Perhaps I shall notice more on the next visit.

On the north side of the river were several tractors engaged in the harvesting of potatoes.   The main tractor was trailing a machine which dug up potatoes at its front end and at the back end had a conveyor belt which was filling up tractor after tractor with very fresh potatoes.   A potato was in a tractor on the A10 (holding up traffic) within 10 minutes of having been dug out of the ground!   I had thought those sorts of time scales were the advertising point for garden peas.

 There was an enormous expanse of solar panels in a field on the south side of the river;  allegedly another form of farming?

Swans in the mist on The Cam

It was another very misty morning and this time I went down to The Cam at Clayhithe and walked upstream.   There was virtually no movement on the water so some positive reflections.   Even though the Mute Swans were only a matter of feet away, such was the intensity of the mist that it could be seen between the Swan and the bank.

Yes, I am working on 'white' as a photographic theme!

 Couldn't resist photographing this cow which was also enveloped in mist.

Milton Country Park

This morning was the first which made me think that Autumn is round the corner, despite the forecast talking of some sunny, warm days ahead.

It was the mist which held my attention and so I took the dogs to where there was likely to be mist hanging over water.   There were also some magical cobwebs with 'jewels' hanging from them, and shafts of autumnal light - a lovely time of the year.