Sensible

This was the second time I witnessed this Nuthatch managing to get three sunflower hearts in its bill at the same time – a few seconds earlier it had achieved the same feat, but then spoiled it by getting overambitious, trying for a fourth, and dropping two. This time it was more sensible and stopped at three, carrying them away, presumably to cache.

You wouldn’t think it from this image, but the light in Stratford this afternoon was gorgeous – if you find that hard to believe, check out my second photo of the now-famous Black Swan, taken twenty minutes later from the Bancroft Gardens. When I say ‘famous’, I mean that all the time I was trying to capture it out on good water on its own, people kept rushing down to the wharf, going, “Look – there it is!” and throwing food for it. The swan’s aggression in the teeth of a waterfowl feeding frenzy was more overt than mine, which I managed to keep at the level of an almost inaudible growl, but of the two of us I’d say that I was most definitely the more hacked off. Still, I’ve now completed my self-appointed task of photographing this bird in good light – almost too good, if we’re being honest, though on these occasions I always reach breezily for the term ‘beauty light’ – which means that I can now leave it alone and get on with looking for better subjects.

On the subject of which, it was most definitely owling light this afternoon, and I was twitchy about missing out on it. But with much regret I decided that it wasn’t owling airflow, with wind in the upper teens of miles per hour, and gusting into the high twenties. One bit of owling lore to which I cling quite resolutely, never having seen it disproved, it that Short-eared Owls don’t like hunting in windy weather because the noise makes it hard for them to hear the rustling of their prey in the grass, so when it’s windy I tend to stay home. Set against this, the Cotswold scarp has its own peculiar weather system, which makes it hard for the weather forecasters to predict conditions there accurately – but if it was windy down in the Vale of Evesham (which it very much was), I find it hard to believe that it would be calm up on the nearest high plateau. If you hear heartbroken keening, reminiscent of a Basset Griffon confined by his owner on the wrong side of an unscalable gate, you’ll know that I’ve seen photos this evening that have proved my weather supposition wrong.