Set Fare

It was a beautiful bright frosty morning, I was out early and walked the length of Epping Long Green, which is on the fringes of Epping Forest. As I shot an off-the-beaten-track farmhouse that we had toyed with buying in the seventies, Reynard trotted into the frame. I saw Jenny wren but she is too quick for me and a pair of Jays were too far away to capture.

I spotted this fieldfare in an ash tree when I was nearly back to the car. A nearby field was thick with a flock of them.

I didn't see a woodcock but this from John Clare sums up my walk.

"Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread
The fieldfare chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the awe round fields and closen rove
And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again"

A bumbarrel is a long-tailed-tit, I've seen lots of those lately.