The terrible weather has put paid to the old fox showing up tonight. He absolutely hates high winds, and it's been blowing a gale out there most of the evening. Even the youngster who did show up only stayed for a minute or so. He was on constant alert, and very jumpy at every sound. It seems to me that the high winds play havoc with fox's hearing, making it difficult for them to keep a check on their surroundings. That makes them incredibly skittish. Note how his ears are held back.
Young fox on alert
<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>
This morning, in contrast, we had beautiful sunshine and a mass of classic cotton wool clouds overhead.
Cumulus nimbus
But the light was great, and I spotted a visiting Great Tit which was doing its level best to stay hidden in the beech trees. I ended up switching my camera to manual mode and using a higher F-stop to get some depth of focus to cut through the tangle of twigs.
Plus a couple of overhead flyers…
One of the ubiquitous Herring Gulls that live round these parts.
Equally frequently, light aircraft fly overhead.
And then this afternoon, on my way back from the local rubbish dump (depositing green waste for recycling) where I got soaked in a sudden downpour, I stopped to capture a rainbow ;).
Just a couple of minutes after the previous shot the sun re-emerged.
For all the looking up, I do occasionally look down, and this evening I noticed something under a small drain cover in the garden. The drain used to lead to a soak-away (now disused) and it tends to silt up quite heavily after rain. I'd cleared it out yesterday so I guess this chap must have been lurking deeper down and out of reach.
Newt in a drain.