Tuesday was a horrible wet and cold morning but it brightened up a little bit in the afternoon before more showers spread in after dark.
We were lucky enough to see a Bittern today but it wasn't the difficult to spot birding variety. This was a big blue steam locomotive. Easy to spot if you know a time and a place.
Now as everyone knows we've all had lots of rain and its caused some severe flooding in some parts of the country. The talk on TV and in newspapers is as though it’s always like this and it will never end. Hard to image then that back in the summer months it wouldn't have been possible to see a steam locomotive operating under its own steam like this in Yorkshire. It was considered so dry that the sparks emitted in the smoke would set off line side fires. This did happen before the ban came into place.
This is a steam locomotive operating over the same stretch of line at the end of August 2013. Note that there’s no smoke and that diesel engine tucked in behind is doing all the work. But now all that has changed and we've more water than we know what to do with.
Once we were back home the sun came out and I thought it would be a good chance to try for a photograph of one of our female blackbirds. For some reason they seem rather more elusive than the 4 or 5 males we see regularly chasing one another around the garden.
I didn't manage to capture a female as you can see. This is one of “Hoppy’s” rivals as they fight for rights to food on the bird table and a suitable female for mating. As for the females they seemed to be in short supply today so someone may be unlucky.
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Lovely photo of the Bittern, what a striking colour it is. I was just looking at some photos from July last night and remembering how brown the grass was - no green at all at our local park. This too will pass, although probably not any time soon.
ReplyDeleteTt would have looked even better in a little bit of sunshine. Pouring down again here today.
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