Another Riverside Walk

  I set off from Marston Moretaine, and headed towards Bedford, and the destination on this occasion was the River Great Ouse at Willington, having parked in some shade, I put my 60-600mm Sigma into my rucksack, and mounted the Canon EOS R6 with the 24-70mm + Macro facility on the monopod, and set off past the Dovecote to the entrance to the woods and the river. I carried a spare fully charged battery, as the one in the camera was only half-charged.

  The first image I took simply appealed to my sense of humour in that the dead tree seemed to depict a Klu Klux Clansman with other bleached and petrified stumps nearby. Am I alone in  visualising faces, animals, and other features in the trees as I walk in woods? As trees age, and branches break off and the trees heal, I frequently see heads or other features form animals and birds without human intervention, and later this same day I come across examples of carving that are not simply happenstance as well as a querulous raised eyebrow that was definitely not the result of human intervention.

  I met and chatted to a few fellow walkers at healthy distanced proximity, and enjoyed a pleasant Spring walk with my camera.

Bedford–River Walk in Sunshine

On this particular day, I took a trip to Bedford and a Car Park that would give me a good spot to take a walk along the River Great Ouse. It was fairly late in the day, but there was still some warmth, but knowing the chances of rain were high, I was prepared for that eventuality, and it proved to be a well-founded perception.
 I had chosen a start I had taken before, but my intention was to follow a different route though still keep close to the river. Soon after crossing the bridge and entering the wide expanse of grass alongside one tributary of the river I spotted a lone angler, so I decided to walk along metal walkway to have a word with the man and enquire whether he knew of any nearby locations I might spot kingfishers.
He told me that he had seen some further along the stretch I was about to continue heading — I thanked him and had barely reached the spot from where I had decided to walk over to him, when I was amazed by the very species of bird I sought head from the woods towards me in a blur of blue and orange, then take a sharp left turn and fly away alongside the stretch of river I had been coming from!
Although there was naturally disappointment in not having the opportunity to get a shot of the kingfisher, I still found enormous pleasure from the sight of my favourite bird, as it had reinforced the knowledge of a potential location for the future — for that I was sufficiently pleased that I returned to the angler to recount what I had just witnessed and told him I just had to thank him for bringing me good luck!
Sad to report I was not treated to any further sighting of a kingfisher, but I did get some shots of a heron, another avian favourite of mine, and that situation came about from my talking to a canoeist who a short while later pointed out the heron to me, so on this occasion I did manage to get shots of this one!
These were the photographic highlights for me, even though I spent much longer before ending this particular sortie. Later, after deciding to consider starting my return journey to the car, I took a shot of what I first thought was a bird in the undergrowth I was embarrassed to find it was a log! It was at this point of acute embarrassment I came across a lady ahead of me, and felt I simply had to own up to this abysmal failure! We ended up walking along the same route chatting away, and it was during this walk I began noting raindrops whilst we talked. As I neared the end of my journey, the lady stopped at a point where our journeys separated, and we took our individual ways home as the rain increased.