Bowood 2016 #29 (Monday 25th July 2016)

One bugbear I do have with Bowood is with their season ticket holder procedures. The card they issue does not have a name or expiry date on it and so has to be put through their card reader at each visit. There is only one of these readers and it is only accessible to the receptionist who also works the credit cards and admissions. Anyone else in the same kiosk can only send season ticket holders to the back of the queue. Some who recognise me will wave me through and sign me in later, but others, including the one on duty on Monday, send me back.

This is exasperating, makes me feel like a third class citizen and puts me out for the rest of my visit. I usually arrive at a quiet time late in the day, but once the queue was still so long that I gave up, returned to the car, went on to somewhere else and didn't go back for some weeks, mainly to avoid a recurrence of this.

I was further annoyed a little later when a small party, mostly children, some way away, noticed me slowly advancing on a brown hare, and decided to do the same, scaring it away of course with their stage whispers as they approached. They thought it was a rabbit.

When I reached the Lake I noticed a family of great crested grebes nearby, with two chicks learning to dive (see Extra). I have blipped grebes before, but not one solely of a chick, so I chose this for my blip. It was taken with my superzoom at the equivalent of 2000 mm and also cropped, so the detail is not as great as I would have liked. I took a shot of some rosebay willowherb and blackberry bramble. On the other side of the Lake I saw something on the opposite bank I first took to be a heron, but through the zoom lens viewfinder I could make it out to be a cormorant. The pictures were too soft to use, unfortunately.

The geese were in a row on Lake Field and I passed them on my way up to the House and Gardens, to look at the roses (see also second Extra).

P.S. I could have modified this for Mono Monday, but then you'd have missed the all-important Red Spot.

L.
29.7.2016 (1256 hr)

Blip #1898 (#2148 including archived blips)
Consecutive Blip #002
Day #2314
LOTD #1133 (#1257 including archived blips)

Taken with Nikon Coolpix P900 (24-2000mm equivalent superzoom bridge camera)
Extra taken with Pentax K-1 and Pentax HD P-D FA 28-105mm f/3.5-5.6ED DC WR lens

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

A Visit To Bowood, 25 July 2016 (Flickr album)

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
The Nightcrawlers - The Little Black Egg (1965)
Rob Rouse (vocal, tambourine), Sylvan Wells (lead guitar, harmonica), Charlie Conlon (bass, vocal), Pete Thomason (rhythm guitar, vocal), Tommy Ruger (drums),
Six Music are celebrating psychedelia this week, along with its sub-genres that were invented long after the records were made, such as psych rock and freakbeat, and I thought I would jump on the bandwagon for the week.
The Nightcrawlers were an American garage band formed in Daytona Beach FL 1965, and wrote this for an Easter concert in which the band opened for The Beach Boys but it was re-released twice before reaching 85 in the charts in 1967.
The song has been covered by Tarnation, the Pagans, the Primitives, the Cars, Inner City Unit, the Lemonheads, Music Explosion and many others.

One year ago:
Calne Bike Meet