Enough said!

Golden foxes



Shepherd's Warning



The sun cometh



Squirrel tracks



No more snow has fallen (yet) but it is still very cold

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

Lark

noun 1 an amusing adventure or escapade. 2 Brit. an activity regarded as foolish or a waste of time: he’s serious about this music lark.

verb behave in a playful and mischievous way.

Alternatively, larks are small brown birds in the Alaudidae which are easily overlooked when silent but deliver famously trilling songs. In the skylark's case, they're produced as the bird propels itself far into the sky - a quite astonishing feat of lung use, when you stop to think about it; it's probably the equivilent of a human singing an opera while out jogging

— PHRASES "be up with the lark": get out of bed very early in the morning.

An early start does help with finding wild mammals, although the only meadow fox that I saw this morning was crossing a track down to a farm, and didn't give me much of a chance.



I suspect that the deer were up long before I was, although only their tracks gave away their existence



But photographing larks is a lark, in the second noun definition above They're normally hard to spot when on the land and while their song, as well as inspiring the likes of Vaughan Williams, gives them away in the air, it's still very challenging to capture a fast-moving tiny little bird. If only they were as cooperative as blue tits!



Or the Old Dogfox.



Or even Leila.



But then, I guess, they wouldn't be larks, zipping across fields of stubble and occasionally soaring high and singing. That is a lark in the picture below. Honest


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Walking at this time of year involves a lot of mud. There is an easier way: set the trail cam up in the back garden looking at some bird seed, and see what arrives! The quality cannot compare to a DSLR but it's still a lot of fun.


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I'm running low on Opera space, so will probably put galleries on my own website in the future. I'm currently doing some spring cleaning of the website's design; it's not quite done but you can have a look if you like That's what led to the change of blog banner, too.
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I've been tagged by Eric! This means that I'm supposed to give six random facts about myself and tag six other people. I'll think I'll bend the rules and skip the second stage, as many of the people I know have already been tagged, or have in the past expressed preferences not to be tagged!

1. If you asked me to immediately tell you what was right and left, I'd probably get it wrong
2. I'm a very tough Scrabble player; I've got over 200 points in a turn on occasion
3. The first wild creature that I saw in Africa was a house sparrow!
4. I used to be able to count to ten in Hindi
5. I once broke my wrist while playing tag with Kelly (she was aghast!)
6. One of my A-Levels is government and politics!

Slowly but surely the cougar of the estuary is revealing its secrets. While the cat itself remains hidden in some ferns or perhaps reclined on the bough of a mature tree, its tracks betray its presence and its habits.

Just over a month since its last confirmed visit, the cougar is back. Yesterday I found clear tracks in the mud near a puddle. As luck would have it, the weather was awful and the only camera I had with me was the little handycam, which I can slip in my raincoat pocket. I can take stills with it but the quality isn't quite that of a DSLR Still, a cougar track is a cougar track Note the three lobes on the base of the heel pad - dead giveaway that this was left by a feline.



This afternoon I returned in better weather, and although the rain had softened the tracks, it was still an amazing experience to step so close to the world of this most secretive forest phantom

What can be deduced about this cougar? The tracks are smaller than the 4in length that indicates a really big cat; perhaps it is a female, or a juvenile. The size is identical to the track I found elsewhere in the estuary back at the end of June. That is to be expected, as cougars are extremely territorial. Female cougars defend their ranges against other females, although a dominant male's range will overlap those of several females. His territory can be up to 175 square kilometres

In my mind's eye I can see this cat very clearly, standing by the boardwalk...



Although the tracks are tough to read, I surmise it stood still briefly here, pausing in its prowl. I've highlighted the footprints using Photoshop to make things clearer. Looking down at these, I was suddenly aware of how long the cougar was; how it appeared to be standing with its forepaws bearing the weight evenly and its hindfeet close together, as if one had been placed as an afterthought.



Did it smell something? Or hear something? The frogs would be croaking in the pond just around the corner and the crows at last, at long last, would be silent.

All subtle cat clues

It would be long after dusk; cougars tend to be highly nocturnal where they exist close to humanity. It would be raining, to be sure, water dripping off the long heavy tail and rich tawny back. Perhaps mud splashed up onto its snow-white chest - but none of the tracks here reveal that it was running. It stepped straight through the water, yet the tracks in the mud show slowness and care.

The gap between the ferns and the walkway is narrow, but even in the dark the cougar would still be able to see, and be guided by its whiskers.

The cat left the mud to enter the undergrowth of ferns and berry bushes just here.



It appears to have re-entered the trail; yesterday there were heavy tracks throughout the area. Hard to distinguish to species amongst the gravel, just a few hints of pad marks or hooves, they nevertheless showed large running wildlife. Of particular interest is this:



Cougars mark their territory by "scrapes" - kicking up debris and then urinating on it. But I don't think that's what we have here. It's more like something slithered suddenly to a sliding stop, or perhaps made a sharp turn.

If only the trees could talk


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Meanwhile the snakes are still very active, and I am really enjoying watching them.



They prey upon slugs and earthworms, but I don't know if their diet includes the infamous banana slug - it's probably too big for them. These are very little snakes and their heads are scarcely bigger than my thumb.