Tit With A Tash

They were holding a wassail at the Langford Museum Of Power near Maldon so I went to check it out. I missed the planting of the apple trees but caught the Morris dancers and mingled with people quaffing mulled cider. I had a nose around the museum too. 

From there I went to Heybridge Basin for a walk. I met a man on the sea-wall carrying a camera and huge lens on a tripod and asked him if he had seen anything interesting. He'd got shots of bearded tits, told me where to look and to listen for their 'ping' call. I always think positive so made my way to the point with the gorse bushes.

When I first saw movement in the reeds I thought it was probably reed buntings but then I heard, "Ping, ping, ping." I could hardly believe my eyes, the birds are so beautiful. I've never seen or photographed one before. The light was perfect too. I've added a female to extras.

Today's poem is from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto IV, verses 178 &184 by Lord Byron 

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
   There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
   There is society where none intrudes,
   By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
   I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
   From these our interviews, in which I steal
   From all I may be, or have been before,
   To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
   Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
   Borne like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
   I wantoned with thy breakers — they to me
   Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
   Made them a terror — ’twas a pleasing fear,
   For I was as it were a child of thee,
   And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here."


I love it. I love pathless woods and lonely shores. I love swimming in the sea when the waves are huge and dangerous. I've only done it a few times. On one memorable occasion we had sailed the Gulf of Gokova in Turkey in heavy weather, the only time that we have ever had a blue one break over the boat and fill the cockpit. When we got in to port the weather was still wild and we went swimming in huge breakers. My costume filled with pebbles. Fantastic. :)