Coate Water Park (Wednesday 12th January 2022)

A surprise patch of cold blue sky was enough to tempt me away from housely chores and into the great unknown, or at least to Coate Water Park, the nearest sizeable nature reserve to home, lying on the outskirts of Swindon. I parked on Broome Croft Road, as I had last September, but walked around the lake clockwise on this occasion.

I had three cameras with me but it proved impractical to hang all three around my neck in addition to a camera bag and some corded glasses so I began with the Nikon P900 for the first half of the walk, which got me as far as the Café and main entrance.

By then I'd seen a number of cormorants, but still too far away to get the profiled head-shot I'd been after for some time. The sole black swan had teamed up with some mute swans and was promenading along the front, together with gulls, geese, ducks and pigeons.

After switching to my red/yellow K50 combo I meandered up the return side, watching squirrels playing along the way. There is a long bridge which crosses two sections of the lake and I spent some time there watching a grey heron fly over and land in a tree, where another heron had also taken up a tree top vantage point residence, and I attempted some shots, stretching the reach of my 70-300mm lens.

I ventured an unexplored path that disappointingly led me to the M4 and a circular spiralling concrete path that led over it that I declined to take, and returned for a second attempt at the heron, one take of which is my Blip, and took the lakeside path back to Archie, patiently waiting.

Thanks to Cailleach for hosting Wild Wednesday.

Some bridgeworks had closed the road on my previous visit, but now I was able to drive South to find where I would come out. It was a narrow awkward lane with a traffic light at the M4 bridge that was directly in front of the lowering sun, rendering me blind, and after navigating that I rounded a very narrow corner and had to awkwardly back up downhill for a car to get past. The route the sat nav suggested for me turned out to be five miles longer than the outward journey but I have since worked out a much better alternative for a future occasion.

L.
Thursday 13.2022 (1614 hr)

Blip #3567 (#3317 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #000
Blips/Extras In 2023 #005/265 + #006/100 Extras
Day #4310 (998 gaps from 26.3.2010)
LOTD #2709 (#2549 + 160 in archived blips)

Taken with Pentax K-50 (Yellow) and Sigma AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG Macro lens

Swindon series
Birds series
Herons series
Wildlife series

Coate Water Park, 12 January 2022 (Flickr album of 40 photos)

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Ronettes - Walking in the rain (recorded September 1964, Gold Star, Hollywood CA)
R.I.P. Ronnie Spector (Veronica Bennett)(10 August 1943, Washington Heights, Manhattan NY - 12 January 2022, Danbury CT), daughter of an African-American-Cherokee mother and Irish–American father; formerly married to Phil Spector.
As well as being a single, this was the opening track on their incomparable debut album, ...Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica, Veronica of course being the fabulous Ronnie Spector, heard here in a rare stereo mix.