A very gray and chilly morning, totally unlike yesterday. I could feel the blahs starting to set in, so I decided to get out and walk first thing.
The countryside where I live is not exactly scenic (too flat), but it does have pockets of great beauty if you know where to look. One good thing that has been happening around here over the last few years is that farmers have been opening up their land to give more public access. The farmer of the farm we walked over yesterday (the one with the roosting Barn Owls) has opened up a lot of his field margins as permissive bridleways for walkers and riders to use, and on his land it's possible to see deer, partridges, plovers and hares.
Going the other way out of the village there are two 'new' woods, planted 16 years ago, and the trees in these are now big enough to be 'real' trees and not saplings. Today I walked a new footpath that took me over to Girton, coming out through another 'new' wood, full of thickets of suckering Ash and surrounded by hedgerows with mature trees in them.
Today's walk (no photos, sadly, as it was too gray) yielded Muntjac deer, a black squirrel (a melanistic Gray), and my first singing Skylark of the year - and then, on my way back into the village, a big fox with a white-tipped brush hunting voles along a field margin (my second fox in 2 days - I saw one run across the fields while out with my daughter's ride yesterday).
So, I count myself thoroughly cheered up :-)
