Rabbit

I spent most of the morning helping two novice botanists to set up Excel spreadsheets so that they can record their local area - not that I'm any sort of expert myself! Hopefully they should be OK now, though I suspect a refresher session may be needed when they've gathered some data.

After lunch I went for a slow potter along the river - it was a pleasure to walk along almost dry paths, without slipping and sliding in mud! It's feeling very spring-like, with lots of leaves emerging. I watched a small flock of male bullfinches eating buds from the dogwood, their presence initially revealed by their soft, gentle, low pitched whistles. I then heard the much higher-pitched whistle of the kingfisher, which flew in front of me, dropped down to pluck a fish from the river and flew off upstream, all in the course of a few seconds.

I took a few pictures of water with mono-Monday in mind, and was quite pleased with a couple of them, but in the end I couldn't resist this rabbit. Rosie used to be an inveterate rabbit-chaser, but now, in her old age, she doesn't bother them. We were just coming up a slope onto the bank behind the Boardwalks when I spotted this one, which provided the low perspective, without me having to get down on my knees!

Thank you all for the very kind comments on yesterday's bee - I was amazed that it reached the Spotlight page, though I see now that the selection algorithm has been tweaked to include a greater range of images - a very good move in my opinion.