Down The Lane - 02/02/2009

One thing I can't be accused of is not coming up with features for this blog. Some, like 'On This Day', 'Today, I have been listening to' and 'Life In the Garden' have even appeared more then once! Well, here's a new one. My house is on the edge of a suburban sprawl within earshot and sprinting distance of the M1 motorway, separated from it by only an industrial estate. It's not all bad though. Literally within four hundred yards heading south from the estate along Springwell Lane, you are in the middle of farmland. Granted, it's fairly crap and sterile farmland compared to the wildlife enriched pastures of old, but nonetheless there are cows, grass, ditches, trees and hedges. It's not too long ago, 12 years or so, that I could walk down the lane and occasionally see Tree Sparrow, Corn Bunting and Grey Partridge. Now I feel lucky to see a Yellowhammer, although I regularly see Common Buzzards overhead. On the moth front I have had a bit more luck, especially when I found a number of Puss Moth larvae on small sallows in a hedgerow. Really, I just need an excuse to get walking down there more often, so through the year an occasional Down The Lane posting will be the catalyst. Today, seeing as it was snowing, I headed down there during the late afternoon flurries to get a few atmospheric shots in the dull dusky light. I even changed a couple of shots to greyscale for extra arty-fartyness. For even more pretentiousness, I have given each shot a title. Gallery material I'm sure. The bonus for this effort was seeing Little Owl - I've seen a few along the lane on top of the hedgerow over the years and often hear them a night, but today I think I hit them at just the right time as one was calling from a tree and then popped up out of a hollow. One to watch I think. 'Snow in Bark' 'The Ditch' 'The Lane' 'Tree in Hedgerow'