Bowood 2016 #2 (Tuesday 22th March 2016)

Bowood opens for its 2016 season on Friday. Meanwhile I made my second trip of the year to its Lake via the public footpath from Pillars Lodge at Mile Elm. It took me an hour to reach my destination alongside the lake, but I had dillied and dallied along the way, not least by looking at the sheep with their new-born gambolling lambs. I'd also seen my first dandelion clock of the year (proof is in the album linked to below), and glimpsed a grey heron in one of the fields. The Canada geese were honking all kinds of coded messages and there were the usual lesser black-backed, coots and the like.

It was a somewhat dull and overcast afternoon, but on the walk back I saw a couple of herons in flight along the valley and I surprised a brown hare. It looked surprisingly tall, with its ears pricked up.

As dusk fell I saw three red kites soaring above the path and one landed above me in a tree. I'm told they have been seen there carrying nesting material. I couldn't get any pictures of them, although I tried, but it is a joy to see them.

L.
23.3.2016 (1604 hr)

Blip #1786 (#2036 including archived blips)
Consecutive Blip #000
Day #2189
LOTD #1020 (#1144 including archived blips)

Taken with Pentax K-5 and Pentax  D FA Macro 100mm F2.8 WR lens

A Walk Up To Bowood Lake, 22 March 2016 (Flickr album)

Bowood 2016 series
Bowood series
Bowood 2013-2016 (Flickr collection)(Work in progress)
Landscape series

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Led Zeppelin - Good Times, Bad Times (recorded October 1968)
On this day in 1969 a group called the New Yardbirds were booked to play at my regular club, Mother's of Erdington, Birmingham. I was a big Yardbirds fan so I went along with some mates to see them. However I was bitterly disappointed and shocked as the only member of the Yardbirds still in the line-up was Jimmy Page, who had been the last member to join, eventually taking over guitar duties from Jeff Beck. He was better known as a session guitarist and only a couple of Yardbirds tracks that he played on had been released in the UK. These pretenders were very loud, unsubtle and brazen and had some local show-off singer called Robert that the girls seemed to like. Pah!
It was decades before I recognised their debut album, Led Zeppelin, as the awesome classic that it so obviously was and is.
That album had not been released in the UK until a week or so after I saw them, but this debut single had just come out (with Communication Breakdown on the flip-side!), although I don't think I had heard it at the time.

One year ago:
Picnic On The Marden