A beautifully brisk morning greeted me as I arrived today, the glorious beams of golden sun caressed the ground with its gentle fingers and dissipated the last few patches of Jack Frost’s work. I marvelled at the playful swirls of mist that radiated from the warming earth and floated in the air like incorporeal spirits.
Unfortunately, the majority of my morning patrol was spent supervising a group of seven pesky Hereford Cows who refused to be contained in the constraints of their allotted field and had made a great escape, frolicking with naive joy in the middle of the road. Once ushered in to the relative safety of Long meadow they settled down to the fresh, tasty grass on offer, contently munching while occasionally letting out a belligerent declaration of moos that seemed to say “We shall not, we shall not be MOOOOVED!"
Elsewhere on the park, in the short interlude of cow management, I managed to set eyes on the neatly rowed V shaped spots of a Song thrush who was busy picking through the leaves to find a snail shell to smash. Jays flashed stylistically from tree to tree while a pair of conniving Magpies cackled while they hatched a vexatious plan from the branches of a Holm Oak. I spied a fluffy white tailed Rabbit bouncing through the grass while Crows and Ravens blotted out the sun with their ominous darkness above me. Leaves crunched crisply under foot as I strolled through the Woodland trail, disturbing a Robin and a number of Wood pigeons that were convening near the dull pinkness of a Tamarisk bush and a Pied Wagtail gave me sass by wagging its tail at me with attitude.
As can be expected at this time of year gangs of Goldfinches swarmed like angry wasps in summer outnumbering the less prominent Great tits, Blue tits and Chaffinches below them. A Green woodpecker rested in a tree for long enough for me to get a good look at the red streaks that flanked his face and, at the bottom of the castle, I was happy to catch sight of an Oystercatcher dipping its long bill in to the waves as they lapped at the shore.