Fade Away

For one reason or another my time out in the Fen has been pretty limited this summer, I have been exceptionally fortunate in having the odd half hour here and there in different parts of the country to enjoy a smidgen of Purple Emperor , a smatter of Silver-spotted Skipper and an adulation of Adonis Blue.  I revelled in a protracted tussle between a Peregrine and a Goshawk across an indigo of heather and regiment of pine.  A lone Skua harried a Kittiwake as a 2 CY Med Gull looked on from the beach, non-plussed to know it had an age....

So within a tepid revelry, of sorts, I took another gifted hour in the wild at Welney where almost all was in slumber.   Ruff in an abandonment of definition gifted variety and over a hundred, far more than your average can of Heinz, picked around the slowly wetting lagoon.  The odd bird harked back with heckles raised to a time, on the tundra perhaps, where valour was all and all was to play for.

 

A similar aesthetic reduction has occurred to the Garganey, honourable raspberry blower of the Fen.  Long gone are the cascading pied and spring skied scapulars and the white browed on chocolate promise of May but here the rewards. Two of this years young with seemingly non-plussed parents, who still spring from the mire and flank the young when a harrier coasts by, mingle with the other moulting duck and dabble occasionally within the algae rich soup of the pool.

 

 

Another BBC NHU video beckons...but then again how is anyone going to drag you away from the Big Blue on TV....if you've not spent time on the sea off Monterey then, if you can, just go.