A ruddy great bomber

I took the longer way to the shops this afternoon – an afternoon activity given that I'm having a day off on account of being exhausted from yesterday's spreadsheeting that didn't finish until gone 7pm again – and I was saddened to see that what with Storm Henk, Storm Isha, and then Storm Jocelyn hammering the point home for the sheer hell of it, we lost a few good veteran trees that stood around the periphery of the historic curling pond: trees that have endured all that the decades have thrown their way, including 1987, but 2024 was a storm too far.  I may nip along with my trailer and rescue some of the remaining pieces, since the chainsaw gang has already visited.

The rain though had filled up the pond.  It's not a proper pond because it's nothing as big as it once was, and was more of a reed bed with trees, but they excavated and cleared a part of it in the last two or three years and the mallards returned.  Today I spotted a heron padding around the reeds and I crept along the path to try to get a photograph.  In crouching down too quickly the heron took flight: great, slow, majestic flaps, and it powered away towards the fields and the hills.  This view was as good as my equally slow Moto G8 camera could produce; a capture is a capture, although you may need to zoom in a bit.