Yesterday's run took me through the cemetery, where the crocuses have now joined the snowdrops in bloom, although I haven't seen any daffodils yet. Woodpigeons are crammed into virtually any available tree space everywhere I go, judging by the broken eggs I'm seeing on the ground round and about, a few have even had a go at nesting only to be thwarted by the weather.
On Balderton Lake the goosander have gone, although there is a large number of great crested grebes swimming and diving about. The fearsome looking, almost dodo like chocolate brown muscovy duck is back on the little landing stage, still enjoying his escape from the farmyard and evidently eating well, as he is larger than the canada geese schlepping about the waters.
The moorhens present a comical sight as they run to escape my running, neck's outstretched, clownish feet flitting across the grass.
Lonon Road lake is busy with wintering black headed gulls, one showing a very odd rust coloured patch on its plumage. The mallards find a way to live in the rubbish and algae filled ditch that rains the lake, the birding equivalent of a third world shanty town.
Further along the run I came to the Millenium Bridge opposite the marina, loving the big dutch barge I've always wanted to own and live on. As I pounded up the wooden walkway, a kestrel was flushed from beneath the bridge and headed off across the river, at the same moment a cormorant lazily flapped along in the opposite direction.
Such sights are small things in the great scheme of nature, but bring a lumbering athlete like me great joy.
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