Out and About in the Country

As is often the case, I have a subject in mind to photograph, but Serendipity dictates what in fact I get to capture. This afternoon I had hoped that I might take advantage of the sun burning off the mist and see red kite taking advantage of any thermals that were created. At the start of my journey I did catch sight of two individual soaring above woodland clumps, but both soon disappeared from view, and in following them found myself travelling between King's Walden and Frogmore.

I spotted a tractor in the distance and thought that might make an interesting subject, as it neared I realised this was a JCB towing a device I had not seen before, after I had taken a few shots and the driver stopped to reset something I asked him what it was and he told me it was a Mole that cut a small diameter tunnel just below the surface to help provide drainage in areas of land prone to becoming waterlogged.
He had finished this particular field and was due to move to another, so I asked whether he minded my continuing to take pictures, he had no problem and suggested I follow him to the new field, which I duly did, and in the second group of shots I now knew what I was looking to describe whereas the first images really showed tractor and tool.
 Arriving at this field I found I could take pictures when he was working close to me, and turn around and take shots of a different tractor towing a different implement in the next field, so I alternated the subjects I shot, before waving farewell to the Mole Driver and set off to pastures new, as I left I was attracted to the lines in the field opposite the gate I was due to leave.
As I headed back towards home I spotted some pheasants that seemed far less wary of me, and managed a few shots before I finished my afternoon shooting session. A very pheasant afternoon all in all!

Hot September Day – Oxfordshire

The intention was to visit a part of the nearby country where Red Kite were supposed be prevalent, and in terms of seeing them I was lucky, but in each occasion, that moment was gone in a flash, despite my waiting around having stopped the car. I spotted a hovering kestrel, but even though the right camera and lens were to hand, and parking up close by was not a problem, it was gone, never to appear again. I had seen a pair of kites in the distance by a bridge, but they never returned, but from that bridge I was surprised to see very rusty, and twisted rails disappearing into the haze yet a red signal was alight, and in the opposite direction just buffers (Health and Safety gone mad?) I stopped at two bridges on the same line and I would surmise that no train has ventured on these lines since Dr Beeching took the axe to Britain’s rural lines in the Sixties. The twists I saw at the second bridge were certainly not the trick of a heat haze!

I took a walk along the canal near Thrupp, and the pubs along the way, must have been very welcoming of the unexpected trade due to the unseasonable warmth for the end of September. The stretch was full of narrowboats, and canoes, and the towpath offered the opportunity for fathers to repair their son’s cycle punctures, parents and grandparents to read their books and magazines, and several to take the opportunity to repair and paint their boats in preparation for the autumn and winter ahead.

I developed a raging toothache, and was very grateful that a village shop had some ibuprofen, and in this same village on my return passage I spotted a wonderful view accentuated by the lowering sun of a cottage just beyond a small pond and reed beds, with a few late flowering lilies; there had been a pair of mallard ducks, but my arrival sent them into the secrecy of the reeds. A little later in the return trip I came across some fields awash with pheasants, close by a drive beyond security gates, where a lone cyclist was leaving the grounds.