Sparkles

Apart for a pink-flushed sunrise, which I was too late getting up for, it was a miserable start to the day, wet and gloomy. But then miraculously the clouds peeled back and the sun came out, and the water droplets refracted and sparkled. Perhaps I've been in a bit of an abstract sort of mood today, but there aren't many opportunities to use the macro at this time of the year. I liked the colours in this shot of an ivy leaf with bokeh and sparkles.

Later in the day I went to Leighton Moss in search of murmurations. The starlings are coming into roost in good numbers (30,000 or so), and tonight the clouds were set to form a pink backdrop to a great wheeling flock. But for whatever reason, they dropped into the reedbeds as they arrived in small bands, no coalescence in the sky into a superorganism.

I consoled myself with views of quartering marsh harriers, the squeals of water rails, and the brief eruption of a cetti's warbler....and in my discovery that a shark lurks in the lagoon.

ps update on Reggie. He is now slumbering in his hibernaculum - in the fridge.