not seeing goldcrests

The longer hours of daylight are making a big difference to life on the canal. I look up from my desk after a quick bout of painting, and see that it's already dawn, and the tea isn't even finished brewing.

The blackbirds and thrushes are singing away in the rain, just as they were doing in yesterday's misty start. I was out looking for bullfinches and goldcrests.

It sort of goes against my ideal of birdwatching, accepting gratefully any bird that comes along, but not actively seeking them out. But it is so nice to see these birds. Particularly goldcrests. Until recently I'd only knowingly seen one once before, when it stopped to perch on the railing next to me on the Pride of Bilbao off Ushant. 

Then six weeks ago I watched a little bird flit across the canal up into an elder tree; I casually assumed it was a wren and wondered why it was behaving slightly differently to the usual wrens, who mostly stay low. So I watched and watched, and realised what it was.

And now I know to look for them, I do keep seeing them. One regularly visits the elder tree by my boat, hunting up and down it for insects; there were two together the other morning, piping and (I guess) canoodling. It's a useful reminder that even if I think I'm walking around with my eyes wide open, I'm still missing what's right there in front of me.

The day warmed up and the sun shone bright as you like, burning off the last of the mist in the valley. The crocuses growing by my mooring rope opened out wide. Cheerful walkers lugged their rucsacs along, and hireboaters chugged by in a leisurely way, on the beer already.

Then the wind got up enough to make a swell along the canal, all of an inch high, and the tarpaulin over the front of the boat flailed as though we were rounding the Horn, and a ferociously cold rain pelted us all.

But there was a rainbow afterwards.