watching out for redwings

It's been a few weeks since I last saw a swallow. I've been watching out for the redwings and fieldfares that come down from Scandinavia for the winter; I'd wondered if the easterly gales we had a week or so ago would blow some over, but I've seen nothing till this morning.

And now the hawthorns all along the towpath are busy with them. Very flighty, though; walk as quietly as I may, they'll dash off to a different tree, constantly on the move, like actors in a bedroom farce.

Goldfinches are busy in the ash tree and the umbillifers in the field across the water.

I'm trying to get on with the pictures for the calendar, in between boat maintenance work, getting Eve ready for the winter. And wandering out to admire the latest autumnal thing, of course.

rough winds

Late summer up on the Long Pound has morphed into autumn, with some lively gales stirring up the canal and turning the hard-baked towpath back to mud. It's getting time to be dropping down through Devizes and into the Shire, where the gales don't blow quite so harshly and they offer the occasional blown-down tree as compensation; as long as they don't land on your boat, they can be a welcome source of firewood.

This was quite the sunrise, though. And an hour later it was just a memory and the sky turned grey and the rain set in again. And I lit the stove to get the ache out of my shoulders.