Urrrrg! Grey... no fishing.

This is the view from the bedroom window this morning... in fact all this morning and into the afternoon!

Somewhere, beyond the trees, is a wood!

I sat there, in bed, watching pigeons and jays come into view... and out of view... especially the pigeons who were flying found in circles... at one point a flight of grey ghosts flew past the other side of the trees.... urrrrg! Grey...

We were going to Le Louroux this morning for the "Grand Emptying"....
but visibility was very poor, as you can see, and the temperature outside was only zero centigrade...
it reached a whole three by noon!!

Also my shattered ankle was telling me that the weather was damp [as if I couldn't work that out for myself!]....
so with shooting paines [oops, Freudian slip there... thinking of fireworks to brighten the day] shooting pains making driving difficult we stayed in.

However, I did find some photographs of the Golden Plover/Lapwing flock I mentioned in the last post... taken in March 2010.... so here they are:

Click to enlarge these... the Golden Plover are the pale birds... and you can see why the Lapwing is also the Green Plover.

About a quarter of the way from the left in the first picture... and a third in on this... is a breeding plumage Golden Plover.

And in this picture he has walked fully into view... just at the bottom, in the group of three,  on the left...
he has a black belly, and a white patch just under the golden back.

Not my best pictures, but these were still a way off!

It's enough to drive you up the wall...

We've had some very wet weather recently...
[213mm between 22nd September and the 22nd of this month]
followed by some unseasonably warm afternoons.
Then damp, foggy evenings and cold misty mornings.

Everything is getting confused...
we've a red Cowslip, from Niall and Antoinette, that has decided to come into bloom....
On Wednesday night, as I was walking  from one building to the other, a car came down the road, lighting  the evening fog...
and in the glow I saw something flitting around....
a bat was out feeding....

We had lizards out sunning themselves on the wall...
and, as I had camera in hand I started to take some pictures.

But the first thing I saw was not a lizard...

                                                                it was a little snake...

                                                                                                  three foot up the wall.

You can see how it is pushing its body into available cracks....

....and threading the tail into crevasses

It was a young Western Whiptail [Heirophis viridiflavus] Couleuvre verte et jaune...
presumably it was light enough to have climbed up there using its scales.
The scales underneath can be 'opened' outward slightly...
like a louvred window...
when you're legless, there is always some way to cling on!

I had to move another one out of the way of the car before leaving for the shops on Wednesday...
it was really lovely close up...
big round doe eyes....
the body about 20cm long, and as I picked it up, it coiled its tail around my fingers and lay along my arm, tongue flicking in and out, scenting the air.
No pictures of that one, though...
I didn't dare nip indoors to grab a camera... although it probably would have stayed put!

But here is a lizard picture...

There were a lot of flies on the wall and spiders in nooks and crannies....
so that was probably their reason for hunting in the vertical.