The Dancing Tree

A frosty, misty morning.  Gus wakes up earlier every day as the days get longer, and we were out shortly after 0700 this morning.  He took a lot of encouraging to get this far, even though it's only about 100 metres further than where we normally get to at the entrance to Redhills Wood.  In the days before Gus, when I was busy at work, I often dashed up here quickly in the mornings to see the mist in the valley and the receding woodlands on the limestone whalebacks.  We also often use to see hares in this field, the name of which is Harefield Parrock.  I've not seen one here for a few years now, though there were a couple of pheasants - this land having  an active shoot of pheasants, partridges and ducks.

Sometimes I don't know where the day went.  I joined C's Zoom Gigong class in the morning, then made a leek and aduki bean stew with the last of the leeks from the allotment.  In the afternoon, we made progress with the big garden tidy-up while keeping an eye out for Reg (still no sign).  A robin was collecting nesting material, the house sparrows have been doing that for a while, and the jackdaws continue to bring twigs to their palatial loft space.

On our evening walk with Gus, we could hear a bittern booming from a kilometre or so away.  Soon we should be seeing roding woodcocks flying along the woodland edge.

I'm turning comments off for a while while I try and catch up.  I also need to cut down by screen time for a while.