This morning I watched the Channel 4 broadcast from Ahmedabad of the last rites of the English Cricket tour of India.
Soon after lunch we visited the pharmacy at Milford on Sea, then drove into the forest.
At Norleywood Car Park we found I was not the only person interested in photographing the wild life. The gentleman in the last two images in this gallery adopted an enviable position from which to obtain his pictures. I was happy to explain to the woman in the first three photographs the story of
the Shetland ponies, which cropped the grass,
ignoring the fallen trees.
Along the road to Beaulieu, many of the trees stand in nature’s water buckets throughout the winter.
Perhaps the ponies gathered here today wished to be near their water source.
I really identified with the seated pony in the final image of the above gallery. All these equine adults when seeking to rise to their feet adopt the practice of first rolling over and thinking about it before stiffly staggering up. This, of course, is why I found the earlier photographer’s position enviable.
Driving along Saint Leonard’s Road past a waterlogged verge, Jackie noticed that the recent drop in the water level had left the surface algae drying on reflected bramble washing lines. These are her pictures;
these are mine.
At the corner of Saint Leonard’s and Norleywood Roads a pony drinking gazpacho soup took umbrage at my attention, shook her head, and sped off into the gorse.
It was a rather startled cockerel that I photographed along South Baddersley Road. Seconds earlier he had been canoodling with a group of guinea fowl. When I unsuccessfully attempted to focus on them they took off, loudly flapping and squawking. He must have wondered what he had done to upset them.
This evening we dined on oven fish and chips, pickled onions, and wallies, with which we finished the Sauvignon Blanc.