Tuesday, 3 February 2015

Winter walk to Deep Hayes Country Park.

I walked out to Deep Hayes Country Park on this cold, mostly calm and sunny morning during which snow from the end of last week still lies frozen in shady spots.

The sky was almost cloud-free though there was some cirrus cloud and contrails high in the sky.

Three views northwest and east from along the disused railway line. 



There are two new-born lambs in an adjacent field. I spotted one yesterday so I think maybe another was born since then. I watched a Buzzard fly close to the mum and her new offspring, perhaps it was looking for afterbirth to eat. There was a large flock of Fieldfares, Redwings and Starlings feeding in the same field as the sheep - when the ground is frozen, as it was today, these species seem to choose fields in which livestock have the disturbed turf and soil with their hooves. I think it helps them find their invertebrate prey more easily. 



A Badger must have been out collecting bedding from a patch of fine-leaved grassy tussocks alongside the railway tracks. You have to wonder why it didn't take it back to its sett? Maybe it was disturbed by a night prowling fox or an early human walker? I have to keep an eye out for the sett as I doubt it is one further along the railway line at Denford as I doubt if a Badger would drag the bedding 3km to that sett. 



There were some icicles......

...and icy branches. 


Plus a red crusty growth on the north side of oak tree trunks in Deep Hayes Country Park.I am not sure if it is algae, lichen or some other form of biofilm.


I admired a view of Shutlingsloe as I walked back through Stanley.






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