Bird latrine

This fence is obviously a regular perch for this pied wagtail, judging by the evidence that has been left behind.  It definitely pays to look before leaning on a fence just at the moment....

I took a walk along the river this morning.  It started bright, cold and frosty.  The frost was good, as the very muddy footpaths were largely traversable.  The recent rains meant that some of the stretches by the river bank were quite tricky to negotiate as they had been flooded and were now iced over.  But after an hour the lovely sunshine disappeared and I had to up the ISO settings on the camera as a result.  

As usual there were some epic blip misses on my part.  The one I was initially most irritated about was the deer being chased by dogs.  I'd seen the dog walkers on the far side of the field. They'd stayed away from the river and were walking along the field's hedge. In the process they flushed a deer, and no amount of shouting on the owners part could get the two dogs to leave off the chase as the deer bounded away. The deer made it to safety easily, and I did get some shots, but none of them were terribly sharp.  At first I was a little frustrated by this failure on my part, but even allowing for a DX crop the the deer was really much too far away to be anything other than a very small part of the resulting shot.

The river is pretty high at the moment, to give you an idea, the extra is a shot of the lock at Swinford, looking towards the weir.  By way of a comparison this shot was taken from a similar position in Mid September the water was then about 10ft lower that it was today. :-)