Anyone reading this is likely to be painfully aware that I mostly – like 95% mostly – blog pictures of flora and fauna on Godfrey’s Pond in Worksop and the Chesterfield Canal between Retford and Kiveton park.
This post is no exception. It starts round t’pond and continues with the walk from Kiveton Park back home.
Lens: the 70-300, while bloody good at the 300 end of its throw, is just too slow at focussing to be any good for rapidly moving wildlife. So I’m almost solely using 18-105 which is lovely. Obviously it’s not as much use for distant birds and such so I’ve been playing about with the editing prog “the GIMP” to pull out some pseudo-closeups from distant pics.
The Nikon D7000 on fast repeat is really fast. I’m out for ½ an hour and there’s over 150 pictures all of which have to be looked at before blogging a few. Those that I’m going to use I editlink before uploading.
Just click on any pic to embiggen.
Round the pond meadow browns, gatekeepers and ringlets seem to have taken over from speckled woods. Didn’t notice the spider until I looked at the pic on the computer a lot later.
Fauna: two of a chiffchaff in its customary place over the footpath (I played with GIMP on these two to show what can be pulled out of a distant picture), an unidentified moth, a ringlet butterfly and a couple of blue/green flies. Flora: flower and fruit of a lime tree and some beautiful rose bay willows.
The old path down the eastern side and underneath Dog Kennel bridge shows how it was formerly a turnover or snakelink bridge.
Fauna: waterfowl are quite rare on the top pound so a moorhen chick was worth snapping. There are some bloody big fish – I’ve seen ’em over a foot long. Even sparrows are beautiful and this was one of the first red admirals I’ve seen this year so you can have two pics for the price of one.
The canal itself is really worth seeing up here. Verdant is, I think, the word. The woods drooping over one side and eighteenth century bridges across make it a must visit any time of year.
Herons always do the same: as you approach they up sticks and fly a couple of hundred yards down the water. After a few repetitions they realise that you’re following and change tactics by flying back behind you.
I’ve shown the flights of locks down to Worksop so many times that I’ll not bother my (few) trusty readers again.
Pudding dyke bridge is the last on the top pound. It is named for the small stream that comes down from Thorpe Salvin and continues on from the weir to Lindrick Dale where it joins Anstone Stones Brook to form the River Ryton.
Flora: a fungus (is it flora?) and a couple of pimpernel flowers.
Fauna: Unidentified caterpillar; unidentified small bird up a tree and the tufted female and her two remaining chicks.
Odds: Bertie Basset in a canalside garden.
The Wisdom of a Wazzock 
The bridge and marker and top pond can join my visualisation sleep thingumy. It’s not been working lately, but at least the view is nice. Rose Bay Willow Herb – everything about it appeals to me. When I was all of 12 first my English teacher Mr Clarke pointed it out to me walking from the annexe to the main school, and I loved the name and the plant as much then as I do now. Horrible thought, he was in his 60’s back then so probably long gone now…
Wish I had the first clue as to photos or cameras so I could make some intelligent comment on the photography, but I don’t, so I won’t try to fake it. I did love the heron though. And Bertie was frankly bizarre 🙂
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Rose bay willow is, I think, called “fireweed” some places. Not because of its colour but ’cause it is the first plant to colonise on burnt out buildings. Like so many “weeds”, if it was rarer it’d be prized. I’m 69, guess how many of my classmates, never mind teachers, are still around. 😦
I nod off to reliving a novel I once wrote Gingerkit just abseiled down my chest – shoulder to knee – claws in full use. not got shirt on ouch! and lost between computers. Can’t be arsed to redo it but like to take the characters beyond the end. Gingerkit is now standing on my lap with front paws around my neck and claws pulsating – he’ll have to go!
You probably know as much about cameras as I do. I’m afraid I leave all the rather complicated stuff to the machine and just “point and shoot”.
Around then there was the Shireoaks Carnival or some such which probably explains Bertie.
(Turned out Gk wanted feeding)
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I remember Mr Clarke saying Rose Bay Willow Herb grew in bomb sites.
Yes, time is a juggernaut. gathering speed, mowing us down hither and thither I’m afraid. My lunatic cat (Cally, for Calico, a naughty tortie if ever there was one) has taken lately to being very attention seeking. It’s just as well she’s beautiful. How lovely to be loved just because you exist, rather than for any real reason 🙂
How bloody awful to have lost a book, is there no way to retrieve it?
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PS, Shireoaks sounds like something from Tolkien 🙂
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Where d’you think Tolkien got his names? From the rolling English countryside, that’s where.
Pedantry mode ON
Shire: Origin: before 900; Middle English; Old English scīr office of administration, jurisdiction of such an office, county.
There is/was an oak tree which marked the point where three counties (Yorks, Notts and Derby) joined, hence Shire Oak
I’ve four cats – all “comers” (appeared scrounging and I, like a sucker, fed ’em)
Cost me £££a day and love me for my feeding ability but …
Lost book was probably crap – SF – sort of variant on $6million man – well a woman (two actually) and English and … Oh it’s complicated. No chance of recovering and probably just as well. 🙂
When I was a kid I had three really close friends – died at age 20, 30 & 40. Fully expected to go at 50. 60 went by quite surprised! 70 next year so a bit apprehensive.
YOLO (sorry)
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Yes, I knew where Shire was from 🙂 I love cats, but if I were to try to have any more in the house Cally would eat them.
God, that’s awful, about your friends. I lost a friend when she was 16, we weren’t all that close, but even so it’s still a horrible memory. Hit by a drunk driver, aged 16. In primary school there was Alison Smith, Alison Orr and me. Alison Smith died, no idea about Alison Orr. Hope she and her blue boots are somewhere doing happy things 🙂
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