Preening

It's hard to avoid it when you've had so many encouraging comments, stars and hearts for a lucky picture that turned out OK. But a lifetime of working in newspapers taught me that today's news is tomorrow's fish-and-chip wrapper. Blips may hang around but blippers don't.

So time to move on (not from blipland! Just to the next blip), but not before thanking every single one of you who stopped by yesterday, whether you clicked in and out or left some kind remarks and/or other goodies. In spite of all that I awoke feeling pretty grotty today and Gill said I wasn't allowed out (it's like being a kid, honestly!). Anyway I persuaded her that a little trip to Wisley would do me good and the sun tried to poke through for a while this afternoon, enough for a watery sunset which I almost blipped.

I don't know why I went for the mallard. Well I do. Gill told me to go with the duck. They weren't doing much - the Wisley ducks are very tame - so when I'd taken a shot or two I asked Gill to come up behind me and make loud noises in order to put them to flight to get some action out of them: cue demented wife, waving arms and screaming.

Honest truth - the ducks just carried on preening, totally underwhelmed. I had a nice robin too and some scraggy flowers I liked. But the duck gets it for attitude - totally unfazed, my kind of duck.