My granddaughter, Emily, and I had already made plans to take Bruno for a walk, but it was down to me to pick the venue. As it happens, I made a very good choice, because it was en route to Barham where we were going to grab something to eat in The Duke of Cumberland PH. This being a pub which Bev and I visited regularly during her cancer treatment, prior to October 2024. The landlady, Hattie, is an absolute diamond and my memories are very happy ones of time spent in her company during that particular period. So it was that I picked Emily up at 10.00 hrs and headed off out onto the flatlands where I hoped to be able to do a bit of recce work for the Carp present, whilst also giving Bruno some exercise and allowing Emily to spend time making a fuss of him. As always, I carried my binoculars, but had decided to take the EOS 70d with the 18 - 55 mm IS lens in the hope of some dragonfly encounters. Major mistake as we couldn't have been on site more than ten minutes when an imm Purple Heron flew over our heads before dropping down onto the drain we were walking besides. Absolutely gob-smacked by the encounter, I did attempt to grab a token record shot as the bird flushed on our approach, seemingly headed off, high, away to the south. Imagine, therefore, my surprise when we spotted it again some twenty minutes later, still along the margins of the drain we were walking besides. When it flushed, this time around, it headed back towards the area we'd first seen it, although we made no effort to confirm this.
 |
| About the best I could hope for using a 55mm lens? |
I was absolutely blown away by the encounter, this being the fifth Purple Heron I've found in Kent and by far the best views obtained, via the bins. The rest of our day passed exactly as we'd hoped, with the Duke of Cumberland experience being everything I (we) could have wished for. A very pleasant day out indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment