20th June 2019 Any [glowing] weather cock in a storm.

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Thursday 20th 66-77F, bright but very cloudy. I looked at the sky repeatedly as I walked away from home. Already warm with only a T-shirt for protection against possible cloudbursts. In fact it looked slightly threatening at times but remained dry.

In close-up the wind vane cockerel proved to be made of dull, stainless steel. Which doesn't remotely explain how incredibly bright it appeared at the height of the storm. The metal weather cock hasn't moved for years and always appears face-on to our viewpoint. [Minus the tree, of course.] There is nothing to reflect in the metal surface even if it was highly polished. Just another of life's strange mysteries.

I walked anticlockwise up to the forest and back down the other way. Two red kites, a female kestrel and a buzzard provided the aerial entertainment. While warblers sang from every bush, hedge and tree in all the variety of their different phrases. Some have a short staccato call. While others go on and on desperately trying to get all the words out as-quickly-as-possible.

The tracks in the woods had not been cleared so I was soon wet up to the waist from wading through tall weeds still wet from yesterday's extreme inclemency. My trousers dried as I walked until only the area immediately above my boots were still dark on my return. Not quite daring, Amazon explorer, but close.

Friday 21st 63F bright but with some cloud. One forecast service says showers around lunchtime. The other says dry and sunny all day.  It's all climate change really but we are safe in the hands of the ruling sociopaths:

 MP Mark Field accused of assaulting Greenpeace activist - BBC News

A warm walk to the lanes. Where a small tabby cat dashed across the road in front of me. Then launched itself into a flat trajectory. Which carried it like a stretched missile, a good 20' out over the cops. Before plopping back down and out of sight. A tremendous leap! Which would easily have carried off an Olympic medal, had it been allowed to compete.

A picture of the sticky bur plants climbing to well over six feet already along hundreds of yards of roadside hedge. On the verge, on other side of the road, it is the turn of thistles to reach for the sky through the tangle of maturing oil seed rape and huge poppies.

Then I was was treated to an aerial display by a beautiful, medium sized, bird of prey. Buff all over, with long, slim, high aspect ratio wings with 'fingers' at the tips. It wheeled sharply over the cat's likely position but soon moved on. On couldn't blame it given the cat's supreme, gymnastic, super powers. It was lucky the cat didn't go VTOL and bring down the bird! A neighbour's cat once snatched a hovering Emperor Dragonfly out of the air from a seated position to well above head height.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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