I look up to ewe

I was feeling too lazy today to go for another big Lake District walk, and the weather early on was not encouraging. Instead this afternoon I went for an exploration on the other side of the Kent Estuary, in search of the landmarks that I frequently photograph from the Sandside side. This has helped to orient me, but didn't provide much inspiration for future blips - but this is part of the new strategy of seeking out new locations, and sometimes it will work and sometimes it won't.

So I settled for a blip of this ewe looking impassively down on me from the top of the sea wall. In another month or two she will be giving birth to the next generation, she is certainly very broad of beam at the moment.

The walk along the sea wall was bracing but was marred by the pong of slurry. The farmers have been out in the wet weather plastering the fields with the stinking stuff, and much of it ends up in the ditches. The farmer's dilemma is that with open slurry lagoons that fill up in wet weather, they then have to spread it on the fields at just the time when it is least likely to soak into the soil.

Compensation for the smell of ordure was seeing a short-eared owl which I flushed from a patch of sea rush on the saltmarsh side of the sea wall. The first I have seen in Cumbria for several years, and species number 87 on the 2012 yearlist. Alas, though, I didn't have the telefoto on the camera at the time. So it's ewe that gets blipped.