{"id":5083,"date":"2016-11-07T16:39:19","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T16:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/?p=5083"},"modified":"2016-11-07T17:02:08","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T17:02:08","slug":"a-touch-of-winter-at-wraysbury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/07\/a-touch-of-winter-at-wraysbury\/","title":{"rendered":"A touch of winter at Wraysbury"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kestrel<\/a>
Kestrel hovering over Wraysbury, under a wintry sky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Winter showed her wizened hand today. The bright sunshine of the morning quickly gave way to cloud under a chilly northerly wind. Zipping up my coat, I wondered if I’d see anything worth remarking, and plodded up the path in the flat light. I looked left at the river Colne, and a plump Water Vole splash-dived among some juicy Iris leaves that I guess it had been cutting. Once a common enough sighting, it’s now something very special.<\/p>\n

The main lake was almost devoid of birds, a distant swan, a few black-headed gulls and a coot or two more or less summing it up, a dull day (apart from the vole). I rounded a bend and came face to face with a very fresh-faced, brightly-coloured fox. It stared at me for a glorious second, then turned tail and fled. Given the long narrow neck of land between the river and the lake, it must have run quite a way to escape.<\/p>\n

\"Fungal<\/a>
Fungal mycelium in newly-fallen Willow trunk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not much further, a riverside willow had fallen on to an ancient hawthorn, forming a striking arch. The broken trunk was quite hollow, only a couple of inches of the newest wood remaining as a thin fragile tube. These large trees grow rapidly to a considerable size \u2014 and suddenly fall. The wood is soft, and it seems that saprophytic fungi (or perhaps parasitic) can speedily destroy it. This tree was layered with a dry papery sheet of whitish mycelium, presumably whatever species it was that rotted the trunk hollow.<\/p>\n

A dark brown Buzzard, almost without markings, floated broad-winged just above the small lakeside trees, almost close enough to touch.<\/p>\n

Beside me, the lake suddenly exploded into a mass of pattering feet on water, as a dozen Gadwall rushed to take off. Perhaps these newly-arrived birds are from the frozen north, unused to the slightest human disturbance.<\/p>\n

The end of the lake held a score of Tufted Duck, their numbers too increasing rapidly now, again presumably from colder lands to the north or east.<\/p>\n

At the steel bridge, a Bullfinch repeated its insistent call, Deu, Deu. And over the grassy meadow, a Kestrel floated silently, hovered, drifted effortlessly upwind to hover again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winter showed her wizened hand today. The bright sunshine of the morning quickly gave way to cloud under a chilly northerly wind. Zipping up my coat, I wondered if I’d see anything worth remarking, and plodded up the path in the flat light. I looked left at the river Colne, and a plump Water Vole … Continue reading A touch of winter at Wraysbury<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[706,12,133,709,705,1126,1128,1127],"class_list":["post-5083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-history","tag-bullfinch","tag-buzzard","tag-fox","tag-gadwall","tag-kestrel","tag-mycelium","tag-tufted-duck","tag-water-vole"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5083"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5093,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5083\/revisions\/5093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}