I was sitting at my desk at work, when I looked out of the window, and high up in the oak tree outside was a white bird. A big white bird. I had no idea what it was.
It looked like a heron, but herons aren’t white, and it looked a little shorter than a heron. Fortunately, Simon recognised it, as he’d seen them before in Dartmouth – it was a Snowy Egret – a small white heron.
It stayed in the tree, preening itself and relaxing, for maybe an hour and a half.
This was the first time I’ve regretted switching to carrying just a pocketable Panasonic Lumix » [ | : UK, US], rather than my Nikon D90 » [ | : UK, US]. I regretted it a lot. I carried the Nikon for a couple of days afterwards, but it didn’t return.
This rainbow greeted us on the way home, and lasted long enough for me to get a snap from our doorway. It was startlingly bright and colourful in reality – in the pic, I’ve had to fiddle with it a bit to get it to look anything like the same, which makes it look a bit fake.
It’s been mostly good weather for the long weekend here. We even managed a walk on Saturday, which we’ve been failing on for quite a while. Grabbed this shot on the way back up Canal Hill to home:
We drove into town today, for lunch at Mad Hatters. I took a few autumn photos whilst walking from the car park to the cafe. After our lunch, we found a jackdaw who was having fun with a leaf, and kept giving us quizzical looks. Surprisingly, it stayed still for long enough for me to get a few shots. I even had the luck to catch one shot as he dropped a dropping.
(That’s an embedded Flickr slideshow, which may well not work in RSS feeds, so you might need to click through to see the pics. Or you can go straight to the set on Flickr)
We went out for a fun walk today. We started by heading down to the old railway line, which has been converted into a nice tree-lined walkway. When we ran out of walkway there, we cut up the lane to join the Grand Western Canal, and back along there to the Ducks Ditty, for a couple of drinks with friends.
We started in heavy fog, which made all the cobwebs very visible. They were kind of pretty, but also a reminder of just how many spiders surrounded us. The sun came out later, though, and it turned into a nice warm day.
You can see all the photos from the trip in this gallery, but here are a some I particularly liked…
The walls of the youth club here in Tiverton are given over to graffiti – no idea if it reduces the amount of graffiti done in other places around the town, but it makes the club itself bright and colourful. As we were passing it last week, I snapped a few close-up shots.
Whilst wandering around Tiverton, I spotted a stone wall (the side of a council building on Old Road) with some interesting patterns. Yes, of course I took some photos…
One of the things that really surprised me about coming to Devon was how common buzzards are here. I’d only seen one once or twice in Nottinghamshire, but here there are plenty.
Yet somehow, I’ve not managed to get a photo.
They aren’t the friendliest of birds, I suppose. They don’t come close, and although I’ve caught glimpses of them quite near, they’ve mainly been from a moving car on a main road. I got a much better sighting on a wallk a while ago, but I only had my Canon G9 with me – a great camera, but not quick enough to catch a buzzard on the wing.
I got my chance on Sunday. We were walking along Canal Hill, when a buzzard flew across in front of us and perched on the top of a house, right on the nearest corner to us. This time, I had my Nikon D40 in my bag, with my 55-200 VR lens fitted. I only got a couple of shots, but they’re the best I’ve managed so far, so here they are:
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: UK, US], rather than my Nikon D90 » [
