Last week I chanced to look out into our garden and saw this wonderful jay. I was taken a bit by surprise as we’ve never had one in the garden before but it was lovely to see it hopping around the trees and even taking a big chunk out of the fat balls!
Just over a week ago I took a walk around Woodthorpe Grange Park as I wanted to photograph the changing of the leaves. A surprising number were still green but there were also some beautuifl reds and golds on display.
I recently visited Attenborough Nature Reserve for the first time in years as I was in need of a change of scene. Run by the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust it covers 205 hectares of lakes, wetland, grassland and scrub. There are several walks around the reserve – on this occasion we did the Tufted Duck Nature Trail which took us past some of the lakes as well as through areas of grassland.
We’ve had foxes in our garden before but during lockdown we had a more frequent visitor than usual in the case of this lovely fox with an injured back leg. At first I assumed he (he’s rolled over onto his back so I’m fairly certain it’s a male) had hurt his leg in an accident but doing some research it actually seems likely this has been caused by mange – other symptoms he has are constant scratching, slitted eyes, being out during the day and a noticeable lack of fear around humans. He seems pretty healthy otherwise and is certainly moving about fine (at one point he jumped right over our pond) and I found a charity (Wildlife Aid) where I could buy some mange treatment and add it to some food for him – though keeping very much in mind to be careful he doesn’t become reliant on me/humans as a source of food. I’ll keep you posted about how this works out, but for now some of my favourite shots of our photogenic visitor.
Please note photos have been removed due to lack of hosting space.
The Jungle Kingdom section of Longleat Safari Park is the area you travel around on foot and has a whole range of animal species – more than a few I’d never met before. One of the my favourites of these new creatures has to be the binturong, which we first encountered curled up asleep but which became more active and alert once we were on our way out of the park. One of only two carnivores with a tail capable of grasping, they are slow-moving animals that live in forests and are on the vulnerable animals list.
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Last weekend we took a trip out to Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. Built in the 1760s it was designed by the architect Robert Adam as a showpiece palace for entertaining and to display Sir Nathaniel Curzon’s collections of paintings and sculpture.
One of the most impressive rooms is the Marble Hall – lit only from windows in the ceiling.
The architect loved Rome, which is evident throughout the room and in particular the statues lining the Hall.
Other highlights include the music room,
the drawing room,
and the saloon, which has a particularly stunning ceiling.
When balls were held there attendees could rest and watch the dances whilst sitting on settees and chairs that were curved to fit the wall.
The house also has an Eastern museum, housing many different artifacts, though it isn’t particularly organised. The highlight for me though is the peacock dress that was worn by Lady Curzon at a ball when her husband was Viceroy of India.
We also visited All Saints Church, in the grounds of the Hall, which has some very impressive stained glass windows.
The park surrounding the Hall is also well worth an explore, though it was too hot that day for us to fully take advantage of the walks available. We had no trouble spotting the wildlife though – sheep everywhere!
I’d definitely recommend it for an enjoyable day out – the cream tea’s in the restaurant are excellent too!
Please note photos have been removed due to lack of hosting space.
No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, I did skip a week last Sunday. But then it was my birthday and my parents and brother were in town so I figured I could do with a week off. And of course because they were here I did a lot more touristy things than I had been doing previously.
As well as the Downtown area of Vancouver and some shopping we walked along the waterfront and I showed them the Olympic Cauldron and some of the sculptures there and around the new conference centre (it was night and none of my pics of the area have come out well – I’ll have to go again during the day as there’s a sculpture of an Orca whale by Douglas Coupland I want to have a decent picture of).
Hello world! Thought it was about time I update this since I’m now safely in Vancouver! The flight over went smoothly, though we were slightly delayed because of the snow at Heathrow, and I met up okay with the other BUNAC travellers who are all a lovely bunch (*waves at those reading this*).
Vancouver itself is great, though I haven’t had chance to do too much exploring just yet. The first few days were doing all the administrative business of living somewhere new, setting up bank accounts etc and then sending out an endless stream of resumes to various temping agencies.
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