Little egret preening itself by The Ocean

Woodpecker’s good friend, Eileen F-P., came to visit us today from her home in Swindon. They met in the 1980s when they were on the same languages course at Edinburgh University and somehow managed to reconnect many years later after we’d moved to our house in Stroud. We spent a couple of hours catching up whilst sitting on the patio in lovely sunshine. Then I drove us to Stonehouse for a short walk by the canal before a spell lounging in the garden of the Stonehouse Court Hotel for afternoon drinks.

Before the drinks we sat for a while on benches next to the towpath before walking a little way along the canal. We saw the pair of swans with their lone cygnet, their second attempt at offspring following the sad loss of their whole brood of five cygnets. Their were also many amusing coots, a large flock of house martins, swallows, ducks and noisy sparrows. I also pointed out where I often see kingfishers, although not today sadly.

But the surprise for me was this little egret perched a few feet above the water level in a tree beside the wide opening of the canal, used for turning long narrowboats, called The Ocean. I managed a few shots as it preened itself before it settled down to snooze on this same branch.