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Friday 24th 60-66F, heavy overcast, a stiff wind and rain. I was lucky on my walk to the lanes. Not least for seeing a female Kestrel being mobbed by tiny birds. It eventually gave up and moved away in the direction I was headed.I watched through my binoculars as it hunted over the newly harvested and freshly baled prairie. After hovering for a while the bird shot away, across wind, to search elsewhere. Hundreds of gulls were soaring in a cloud at the top of the hill. I wonder if anybody has seriously considered the risk of them carrying the virus away from a Jinping infected mink farm? The mink shit is spread on the fields. So that is another avenue of potential contagion. Our vulnerabilities are countless when you think about it.
Soon after that, I reached my halfway point. As I turned I could see the rain coming across the landscape as a white mist. It took another 200 yards of walking to finally reach me but then I seemed to be moving in a fairly dry bubble. So that I reached home only slightly damp despite the rain being highly visible in horizontal sheets out across the fields in all directions.
A rather pale, buff and untidy bird of prey, resembling a Red kite, was hunting near home. It had the long V-tail but none of the usual strong colours. Nor were the familiar, distinct patterns visible. I thought it might be a juvenile but the images online show even sharper colouration for young birds. Another mystery. Or just my ignorance of the huge variety of birds of prey in Denmark.
Have you ever wondered what future [or alien] archaeologists will make of the human race from what we left behind after an erasure pandemic? Imagine these scientists looking at a random concrete slab beside the road.
They wouldn't have a clue that this was where milk churns were left for collection in years past. I doubt most younger people of today would know what they were used for.
The speed with which abandoned roads are hidden by weeds and trees can be quite a shock. If the council didn't come along regularly with their tractor mounted trimmers the hedgerow trees and shrubs would soon take over. Orphaned stretches of road, left behind by new bypasses, are soon unrecognisable for what they were. Old rail tracks often require some very serious "weeding" to become useable cycle paths.
I was reminded of this by the total clearance of a wide and wooded verge. From where a small, roadside field was sold off to a prairie scale farmer. I worried about the loss of habitat and hideously bare bank instead of the soaring trees and deep shade of former decades.
My worries were unfounded. A couple of years later the bank is bursting to the seams with new growth. Probably up to 20' tall in a few places. Warblers and other songbirds have been very busy inhabiting this stretch for most of this year. The view across the prairie, beyond, is now all but lost to the densely packed foliage. There are probably more nesting sites per square yard than entire, huge, old trees once provided.
11.40 and the rain has stopped. With even a few bright intervals as the sky races across from the west.
A rather pale, buff and untidy bird of prey, resembling a Red kite, was hunting near home. It had the long V-tail but none of the usual strong colours. Nor were the familiar, distinct patterns visible. I thought it might be a juvenile but the images online show even sharper colouration for young birds. Another mystery. Or just my ignorance of the huge variety of birds of prey in Denmark.
Have you ever wondered what future [or alien] archaeologists will make of the human race from what we left behind after an erasure pandemic? Imagine these scientists looking at a random concrete slab beside the road.They wouldn't have a clue that this was where milk churns were left for collection in years past. I doubt most younger people of today would know what they were used for.
The speed with which abandoned roads are hidden by weeds and trees can be quite a shock. If the council didn't come along regularly with their tractor mounted trimmers the hedgerow trees and shrubs would soon take over. Orphaned stretches of road, left behind by new bypasses, are soon unrecognisable for what they were. Old rail tracks often require some very serious "weeding" to become useable cycle paths.
I was reminded of this by the total clearance of a wide and wooded verge. From where a small, roadside field was sold off to a prairie scale farmer. I worried about the loss of habitat and hideously bare bank instead of the soaring trees and deep shade of former decades.
My worries were unfounded. A couple of years later the bank is bursting to the seams with new growth. Probably up to 20' tall in a few places. Warblers and other songbirds have been very busy inhabiting this stretch for most of this year. The view across the prairie, beyond, is now all but lost to the densely packed foliage. There are probably more nesting sites per square yard than entire, huge, old trees once provided.
11.40 and the rain has stopped. With even a few bright intervals as the sky races across from the west.
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