My highlight this morning was getting my first ever response from my greeting from a familiar face I have regularly seen walking. The gentleman sensibly responded with “I am getting my walk in before the serious rain comes!” One end of the faded arc of a rainbow appeared to be anchored somewhere in Saxon Field. This morning red sunrise perhaps is indeed “shepherds warning” as heavy rain is forecast!
Not unusually early on a Green Woodpecker was heard later to be silently seen in flight passing over the wares / south field water trough. A Carrion Crow call from the Large Copse whilst the army of Jackdaws covered a territory from the castle to the Lighthouse. Four Great Black Backed Gulls rode an offshore thermal above the wares. Whilst off the sea cliffs a raft of some thirty Guillemots were observed by another fifty odd huddled in their cave ledge. I saw only one Fulmar in action flying close to the cliff tops this morning. It was also a quick fly pass by the Peregrine Falcon seen off Tilly Whim ledge.
The trail I took up the gully flor then up the “quarr” slopes back to the Small Copse just so happened to coincide with a route taken by a Roe Deer. The pointed deer slots in the clay showed we had both walked in the same direction. Elsewhere Worm casts had been “modified” by rainfall! More drastic modification was that a of slaughtered Gorse bush with braches spread like the tendrils of an octopus. All part of the necessary recovery of grassland to benefit our flowering plants and those insects which depend upon them!
Some six Pin Cushion Galls remained upon a Wild Rose opposite the Dolphin Watch Hut. Meanwhile, Cherry Galls we still on an English Oak in the Gully. As yet our native Gall Wasps have yet in have an impact upon the introduced Holm Oaks!
At least a Chaffinches were seen and their brief melodic calls heard. Of course Blackbirds and Robins called out. A Bramble stem successfully tripped me up whilst I pondered over the reptile basking potential of a pile of limestone ensnared with more Bramble!