Duck!

Izzy and Hannah are home for Easter, which is a delight but also, this evening, a small logistical nightmare. I need to collect Dan and Abi at half-five, Izzy from Bentham station at ten past six, and Hannah from Oxenholme at half-seven.

Matters go slightly awry early on, so Izzy's mum, Katherine, collects her from the station and we meet them back at Katherine's house. I don't recall her being that interested in pets when we were married - we had a couple of cats - but these days she and her husband have dogs, cats, chickens and ducks, and also some kind of reptile that eats insects. (In characteristic fashion, she has declared she loves her dog, Fern, more than her children, which, of course, no one believes.)

There is some law of human behaviour that governs the fact that if someone tells you they are going to be two minutes, then once they are out of your sight, they immediately believe that statement no longer applies, and so it was while Izzy dropped her bags off, I spent some time amongst part of the menagerie, resulting in this, possibly the best wildlife shot I've ever taken. (The bar, you will have inferred, is not that high.)