Pugilistic Squirrel

C'mon, put 'em up!  What, you scared to fight me?  I'm only a squirrel!  What are you, a mouse?

The portrait of a pugilistic squirrel was taken this afternoon when Cathy and I went for a walk to Newton Park to get her some exercise*   ;-) 

I took the long lens thinking that there might be some interesting bird life by the ornamental lake.  Its part of a Capability Brown designed landscape and over the years has become heavily silted up, although there is a very pleasant shot circular walk around it.  

However, access to the upper lake is not currently possible as they are in the process of restoring it to its original condition.  The lake has been partly drained and diggers were busy at work removing the silt of ages.  While mildly inconvenient for us, the work was at least actively under way.  There's nothing worse than access paths, roads etc being shut for long periods with no apparent sign of anything actually happening.

Despite all that I did actually take a shot of bird though, and the drying cormorant is uploaded as an extra.  I've given you a squirrel as the main as there were two birds yesterday.  But I do really like the way the cormorants webbed feet clutch the branch.  It looks like its wearing gloves from a halloween costume.

* Living dangerously here, I'm almost certainly going to regret that foolish comment