Swans down

I'm back blipping this as I was just too tired to gather my thoughts yesterday evening!

Back in October Alex had been given an assignment to carry out a woodland survey, as part of his countryside management course. This was to be handed in on the 7th March, despite the fact that woodland surveys should ideally be done between April and July!

He'd been putting it off as long as possible, in the hope that the ground flora would be visible, and I had hoped the college might see sense and put back the hand-in date until after the Easter holidays. However, on Thursday he came back with the news that it did have to be submitted next week, so the whole of yesterday was spent in a local wood helping him lay out tapes, measure trees and confirm some of his plant identifications (of course there were no flowers to help!)

We got back about 4.30 and after a quick cup of tea I took the dogs down to the river. I really didn't want to go out again, but they looked so forlorn at having been ignored all day that I couldn't resist - and as I hadn't really managed to get a suitable blip during our woodland survey, I was hoping for an easy sunset shot!!

We walked a slightly different stretch of the river, and I was rewarded with a fairly spectacular sunset (albeit with a rather prominent pylon in the view), but in the end I preferred this close view of two mute swans up-ended in their search for weed. If you'd like a peek at the wider view you can find some images in my Flickr photostream.

Pete had been to a meeting in Berkshire all day, and didn't get home until after eight. We then cooked a quick meal and sat down to watch an Italian sub-titled detective drama on BBC 4. It didn't really grab me in the way that many of the Nordic series have and I'm afraid I slept through most of it...and then headed straight to bed....so no blip!!