Woodland

I wanted to go to Farmoor this morning after a Little Stint, which has been showing well there for a couple of days now, but after checking the journey time on the mapping app on my phone, I reluctantly accepted that driving to Oxfordshire on a Bank Holiday Monday was not going to be fun, and that getting home again through the end-of-holiday traffic would probably be even worse. So I went to Kemerton Lake instead.

Walking into the East Hide, I was greeted by one of the best, and nicest, of the Cotswolds owling crew, who was there in search of the perfect shot of a Hobby plucking a dragonfly out of the air. I'd definitely back him to get it, but it didn't happen today, because the Hobbies were largely confining their hunting activities to the centre of the lake. He still managed far better shots than I did of the only one that came within range, but he has the reactions you'd expect of a former international marksman, so I forgave myself. However, I think I may be investing in a hide clamp before the winter.

After a while with nothing much to show for the time invested, and by now on my own at the east end of the lake, I decided to try other parts of the reserve, so I shut and locked the members'-only hide and walked through the woodland, smiling at the memory of a conversation R and I had with the Boy Wonder during the family holiday. He wanted to know why it is that people say "a wood", or "woods", and I was now saying "woodland", and which of these was the correct word to use to describe the area of trees and scrub through which we were walking at the time. He'd clearly wanted a definite answer and wasn't best pleased to be told that the terms are interchangeable, but after some discussion he accepted it. The next time I said "woods", he reprovingly said, "I think you mean "woodland."

Eventually I arrived at the Water Level Hide on the west side of the lake, where a young man kindly gave up his seat for me (I clearly looked extremely old, as well as extremely hot and rather tired), and I sat down on the bench, surveyed the scene in front of me, reached for my binoculars, and... realised that I'd left them on the shelf in the East Hide. I could honestly have screamed, but there was nothing for it but go back for them, so off I trudged. Luckily, when I was nearly back at the hide this female Common Darter dropped onto a dead branch by the side of the track, and gave me the best photo opportunity of the afternoon. On some occasions, fortune favours the idiot.