Not so wild life

Bright frosty morning yesterday (Monday), which we thought deserved a visit to Horton Country Park. A clockwise circuit of middling length; not the shortest circuit available, but no means the longest. Certainly not as far as the golf club.

Pond a bit fuller than it sometimes is in the summer, but no action apart from the twittering of invisible small birds. Going round, there was quite a lot of twittering altogether, and while some of the twitterers could be seen, few could be identified without optical help, which I had not thought to bring. I noticed that some of the men we passed had so thought.

But we did get a probable tweet of a small flock of what I took to be coal tits moving through the upper parts of a hedge. And an object lesson in colour, in the form of the back of a robin looking very black against the bright light behind. Black to the point of my almost deciding that it was not a robin but something exotic and tweetable.

Horses in maybe half the fields, some of which were rather churned up. Small flock of pigeons in one field, we supposed sitting ducks should a buzzard or something or that sort come by. Were they feeding on something horse-flavoured? Plenty of magpies and crows. Some seagulls.

Lots of alpacas in one of the Hobbledown fields, lots of nilgai in the field adjacent. These last seemed quite happy to be inspected from fairly close quarters: I suppose being in a zoo they get used it. Maybe even miss it if numbers are down, as they might well be. While the Bactrians kept their distance.

Plenty of dog walkers - with a bit more space per walker than there is at Nonsuch Park, where there are even more of them. Some cyclists and and a few joggers. Enough for one of those Citroën vans selling coffee to have taken up station in the car park, probably the same van which was there on our last visit. We did not indulge though, preferring to take our hots drinks in the comfort of our own home, perhaps as much as ten minutes away. Too cold to be standing about outside for any length of time.

PS: as I type this, getting light in the back garden. Heavy frost, so all very white. With the full moon sinking behind the trees at the back, to the west. Furry black cat sitting on the path going down the right hand side, apparently gazing at the moon.

References

Reference 1: https://www.hobbledown.com/.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/12/horton-observation.html. Another visit to the nilgai, some while ago now.