Tag, you're it...

 I went for a cycle and walks in the park this morning - yesterday was intermittent rain and positively cold. Today was mostly sunny and warm. I have no idea what order Blogger is going to put the photos in and I'm not going to spend a lot of time rearranging them, so I'll upload them and then add text to each one, in case they're not in chronological order. 

So, definitely nothing like chronological order. This was when I had had my walk in the People's Garden, and was cycling back up the hill towards the Ordnance Survey. I could see a group of people (a bit more than twice this number, maybe) walking through the long grass and weeds, all with big nets. There was another man walking along the footpath with a camera, so I asked him what they were doing. He said that they were trying to find the young fawns, to tag them. Sure enough, the signs asking people to be careful and not to let their dogs loose in the areas of long grass have been up for a while now. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a morning. The photographer said he thought that there were a couple of park rangers but that some of them were students from college.

Before leaving the park, I detoured into the Quarry Pond. As soon as I opened the gate, the less somnolent ducks, along with jackdaws, came over hoping for food. It's mostly mallards there (gone are the glory days of the mandarins, alas), with some coots and moorhens. Last year there were a couple of Muscovy ducks and this looks similar, with the wonderful iridescent green plumage and red beak. He's much larger than the mallards, and was very persistent. As I pushed my bike along the path I could hear a pitter patter of feet in the leaves behind me, and when I looked, it was this one still following me until he realised I obviously didn't have anything. 

Next up, enjoying the sun just as much as the ducks at the entry gate, was this sun-bathing squirrel. I was reluctant to disturb him, but he was lying right across the path - and once he got going, it was obvious that there was nothing wrong with him at all, he was just enjoying the warmth of the morning. 

When I first entered the People's Gardens, I spotted this thrush collecting worms. Once she had a beak full, she took off over the road in the direction of the zoo. 

This was also in the People's Gardens. The coot chicks are growing fast, though I guess it's a couple of weeks since I went in to look. Their wings are no longer the little stumpy things that they were. This one was swimming around and happily diving for food, with a watchful adult escort. The other two (there is in fact another one behind the one you can see) were sitting on the nest enjoying the sunshine and occasionally grooming themselves - which is why I could see how much their wings had grown. No sign of the swans and cygnets.