Meltdown

As expected, today dawned bright and clear without a cloud in sight. It was cold enough overnight that the snow was going nowhere, but by mid-morning with full sun and temperatures rising to single digits above zero, the thaw was in full swing. Aside from working from home quite productively for a couple of hours early this morning, I had to make a trip into Blaby to sort out a prescription with the GP surgery and the pharmacy. As seems reasonable to me, I tied this in with a short foray into somewhere different for a change of scene.

In the aerial shot below, the three red dots are my GP surgery, carry on north to the pharmacy, and then take a different route back so I could stop at Bouskell Park.

Bouskell Park is not within my Soar Valley South patch boundary, but it is within the 3km on foot from home area that I set a few years ago. I only visited it a couple of times then, and don't think I've been there since 2013. It's not a massive park, but there are some decent mature oaks and - although I'd forgotten - there is a small pond (cyan dot) which sits immediately behind a listed Victorian ice house that I can't show you as it was boarded up for some restoration work. The accessible parkland is about half of the area that is tied in with Blaby Hall. Leading out from the park (yellow dot) there is a pathway through a conifer plantation that turns c90 degrees south.

There were plenty of people in the middle of the park with small kids on mini sledges sliding down the most pathetic hill you can imagine, and overall the park looked like it must have been awash with kids yesterday making snowmen (or in one case rolling a huge ball of what was clearly more mud than snow). As ever I avoided the people present by walking around the edges, avoiding main paths etc. Where passing at a particular passing point is unavoidable (like the bridge over a small stream from the car park into the park) I make a point of standing aside. So far since we learnt to live under pandemic conditions, I roughly estimate (in a biased and non-scientific way) that 50% of people are courteous and appreciative of such a move [and 80% of those appear younger than me], whilst 50% are ignorant cunts [and 80% of those appear older than me].

I was impressed by the Mallards gathered on the very small bit of water in the otherwise icy pond - at least six pairs, not a single one made a move to come toward me for bread. I had nice views of a perched Buzzard, but unfortunately it was mobbed by Crows as I got the camera fired up. Plenty of tits, but nothing following them around, and again no sight or sound of Nuthatch or any woodpeckers.

This Dunnock was virtually hopping around my feet, and every time the shutter opened it had moved. This was the best shot of the bird, but it is completely wrongly framed hence the shoddy cropping.

The pond I'd forgotten about - almost completely frozen over, which of course was the whole point of it being next to an ice house.

A small group of Black-headed Gulls were raucously making their presence known but only one bothered to land on the ice.

I was surprised to see a nailed on Fairy Tern though ....

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a Black-headed Gull perched in a tree - I can't recall seeing one!

The thaw was particularly evident underneath the branches and canopy of every tree. I was planning to walk the whole length of the conifer plantation, but although you can't really see it here it was like walking in heavy rain so I sacked it off.

Later in the day, I had to go back to the surgery again for a late afternoon appointment with the nurse. I came home via the lane, and stopped to take a snap ....

About 30 seconds after this photo, a Great Spotted Woodpecker silently bounced out of the obvious tree in the middle of the shot and across the lane ....

I'm now on a week off of chemo tablets and I'm feeling a bit perkier than I was last week; weather permitting I'll try and get out and about doing something useful (like actually making an effort to find invertebrates).

Here, blast this out loud and gurn nostalgically. You're welcome.