All quiet........

Well, we seem to whizz around today. Whether the distant and circling rainfall curtains kept us covering the ground, anxious that we may receive a brief soaking, or whether the stillness of everything in the parkland just let us focus on completing the patrol, I don't know.

The sheep were all in the lower parkland below Archer's gate and, in the main, settled. The deer too, in the parkland below the house, were also in a tightish group. The whole place seemed calm and quiet. Goldfinches punctuated the silence and the dead grey sky. They sprang out of the abundant flowering thistle heads in Broomroyd plantation. White tailed bumble bees, too, were feasting on the heads of thistles, almost one per flower cluster.

A handful of swallows swooped. Sparrows flitted from one near hedgerow to a further one. It seemed that, with each one, it was the last of the sparrows, but for quite a time, another would appear out of the nearer branches to flutter the few yards to the further cover. My feeling was that they were playing a game with us. Each, in turn, would fly back to the nearer hedge to emerge over and over again to make the escape.
Despite this passerine activity, at the Rotunda, as the work wound down to the re-opening, a few men were stood around, seemingly passing time as they seemed to have little to do.

It was, however, soon to be changed. As we walked towards the western edges of the Serpentine, an excited mallard racketing was the sound that drew Ian quickly to the water. Mallard of immature appearance were ganging together. There were no beautifully plumaged mallard drakes or any duller but quite clearly mature ducks.
As we approached the edge of the water, they formed three groups which, accompanied by much honking (my father, on a holiday on the Norfolk Broads, said mallard were like the sound of old London Taxis, their drivers squeezing the bulb horns), eventually formed one super flotilla. There must have been about one hundred marshalled into this paddling patrol. They were aware of us but wary. No beaching with the expectation of bread here.

In the drier part of the Serpentine, we disturbed a hare which, running in the long grass with its legs hidden and with its head, ears, upper body and rump visible, appeared to be floating. There are haws forming in the hawthorn, with their leaves beginning to lose their green, and ash keys hang in abundance.
It does not need saying.