SOLSTICE EVE MORNING

SOLSTICE EVE MORNING

Surrounded by song

Sung invisibly

From midsummer trees

Plump with vibrant leaves

Already rust flecked

As the year turns again

Morning birds seem rare

Landing scruffily

Some overnight rave

Kept them sleeping

Working not preening

Life keeping them busy

Two pair’s a good hand

In life’s poker game

But not so strong when

Four magpies in treetops

Flying so far so fast

To my distant wanders

Grey mornings roll along

So surprisingly

Bright shining moments

Of unexpected sunshine

As mist clenches its fist

And the year turns again

MAWH, 190620

ONE LONELY GOOSE

ONE LONELY GOOSE

Where there used to be many

There now seems to be

One lonely goose

Walking up and down the road

As if wondering

Where all it’s mates have gone

MAWH, Sept 2019

NATURE - IT'S GREAT!

NATURE – IT’S GREAT

Nature – it’s great!

She cried entering the hide

Her mother and child in tow

These binoculars are great!

She exclaimed to everyone

Not looking at the view

I couldn’t get my own

Binoculars to work but

These I hired are good

You’ll probably get

Them far cheaper online

Said her mother sagely

She stares at her phone

I’m just looking on eBay

For binocular bargains

Look at the view!

That’s the picture I wanted

Of Conwy castle

The phone clicks and

Less than three minutes after

Arriving in the hide

Full of enthusiasm

For nature they are gone

But as for human nature – it grates!

MAWH, August 2018

BARN OWL

BARN OWL

last night 

just after 

sunset

from out of 

the fuzzy 

twilight -

a barn owl 

briefly 

appeared

hunting

blackbird 

bothering

disappearing

moments later

beyond the curve

of tall yellow

corn grass

and not seen again

MAWH, 080618

OWL CALLING (2 SHORT POEMS)

‪OWL CALLING (1)

Outside somewhere near and far‬
‪Drifting through heavy damp air‬
‪The five o'clock tawny owl‬
‪Mournfully invisibly‬
‪Greets the dawn‬
‪In unseen distant trees‬
‪Black against the fading night‬

MAWH, April 2018


‪OWL CALLING (2)

Her soft loving call
Piercing the darkness
In a chilly living room

The peace of the valley
Softly broken
As dawn is breaking

Joining in
This symphony
Robins, blackbirds, tits

The unseen owl
Mourning the morning
And she is gone

MAWH, April 2018

‪THE PEACE OF THE GARDEN‬

‪THE PEACE OF THE GARDEN‬

‪The peace of the garden‬
‪The demolition truck idling‬
‪The radio in the van blaring‬
‪The aircraft ascending‬
‪The peace of the garden‬

The charm of the garden
The singing of the robins
The cries of the jackdaws
The twittering of tits
The charm of the garden

‪The quiet of the garden‬
‪The motorbike passing‬
‪The four-by-four roaring‬
‪The drivers disputing‬
‪The quiet of the garden‬

MAWH, 140418

WOODPECKERS

‪WOODPECKERS

Yesterday‬
‪I thought I heard‬
‪Distant woodpeckers‬
‪Rattling against the trees‬

‪This morning‬
‪My stomach made‬
‪Very similar sounds‬
‪Was I fooling myself‬

MAWH, 090418

OWL CALL

‪OWL CALL

An Owl's call‬
‪Called me out ‬
‪Into a misty dawn‬
‪I saw no Owls‬

MAWH, 080418

THE OWL BOTHERER

THE OWL BOTHERER

I see him sitting poised at the corner of the field

Eagerly surveying grey horizons growing gloomier

Cagoule hood flapping tripod erected lens extended

The solitude of waiting

Keenly contemplating

No time for debating

He’s done his research

Knowing where it will perch

I find him planted poised at the corner of the field

The orange ghost seeking the white ghost

I see her swooping over the corner of the field

Eagerly surveying over fields and through long grasses

Wings barely flapping eyes patiently hunting silently

The solitude of feeding

Providing after breeding

Food her chicks are needing

Her eyes keenly search

Knowing just when to strike

I spot her flying over the corner of the field

The white ghost there for the orange ghost

Martin A W Holmes, July 2017

THE OWL BOTHERERS

THE OWL BOTHERERS

Not a good night for owl bothering

Grey waves have clamped shut the sky

Curtaining the moon - hiding the blues

The skies won’t be dancing their flamenco

Although white lightning might still strike

I don’t want to go owl bothering

Light’s not looking promising

Not tonight my love – I’ll sit right here

Wondering of unseen flights fanciful

Remembering white lightning strikes

But someone will be owl bothering

They will have no objections

Venturing outdoors – watching the air

Cameras clicking binocular stares

Hoping white lightning will strike twice

Whilst I like to be owl bothering

I prefer lonely meanders

Solitary nights – company free

Lacking all vain hope or expectation

Then a flash of wild white lightning

Other nights I’ll go owl bothering

Pretending that I don’t care

Secretly yearning - Always hoping

For those unpredictable surprises

As white lightning soars and strikes

Martin A W Holmes, July 2017

MOON, SATURDAY 080717

Actually, I was rather chuffed with this one, taken on my evening walk on Saturday. After months of taking photographs of the moon, I do think this might be the most technically competent one that I've ever managed.

Heading back down the hill after watching the sunset and the moon rise between 9.00 and 9.30pm, I ran into a bloke with a camera and tripod and passed a cheery "Nice to see someone doing it properly!" and he replied with a cheery "I'm really here looking for Barn Owls..."

Now, I've been heading up that particular hill for a while now and, whilst I had been told there were Barn Owls about, I never really expected to see one as I lack the patience to wait, and worry about being out too late in the darkness of country lanes, so I mentioned that someone had told me that they were possibly roosting in the quarry, chatted a little about the Tawny Owls which we had seen and heard, and went on my way.

Happily, I still had the "big" lens on the camera, the one which I seldom take out as it's so heavy, and I'm rarely that successful with it as I don't lug a tripod about most of the time. It's a relatively cheap one, too, so the glass isn't all that great, but it serves its purpose.

Nevertheless, as I approached home, I decided to use a handy drystone wall as a makeshift tripod, and try for one or two last shots before heading indoors, just as an aircraft did that rare thing of lining up perfectly with the full moon from the spot I was standing and, given that I had about two seconds to take the shot, I was rather pleased with the resulting shot, especially as so much of it was actually in focus.

By the way, the next evening, walking down the hill after photographing another sunset, fully aware that it was too early and getting far too cloudy for the full moonrise on the 9th of July (about 10.10pm in our neck of the woods), I rather unexpectedly and astoundingly spotted this...

PUFFINS

I went to Puffin Island

Expecting to see nothing

And yet to my amazed surprise

I got to photograph a Puffin

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (33) - OCEAN BEACH

NOVEMBER 14 (Cont'd)

The final destination of this year's California holiday was Ocean Beach, a long, open stretch of sand at the western end of Golden Gate Park which had, on previous occasions, proven tricky for us to get to with the amount of "No Left Turn" or "No Right Turn" signs on the way to it, but, with "Min" to guide us, we got there simply enough, although my inner demons were beginning to mutter darkly about pushing my luck when it came to incident-free driving.

Still, all of that was forgotten as we pulled our luggage-filled car into the car park behind the sea wall and tried to drink in the spectacular views of that most Pacific of Oceans, and watched as the surfers and the hippies made the most of a day where the beach seemed remarkably busy, given that it was still supposed to be a work day.

We got out of the car and walked along the deceptively long seafront up towards Cliff House where there was still one last chance to do some bird-spotting and see the very last batch of Pelicans for this most "Pelican Heavy" of holidays.

It was, of course, a rather bittersweet moment, really, because we were both more than a little aware that this was, indeed, the proverbial "it" as far as this holiday was concerned and, once we returned to our car, and programmed "Min" for one last time, hitting our "Home" button, the holiday would be pretty much all over bar the travelling.

And so, with us both rather overwhelmed with melancholia, we dawdled back, trying to drink in the moment, and the view, and the hot sunshine, and those blazing blue skies, and did our level best to savour the memories so that we could drag them up later when we were back home in our damp and soggy little town in the hills of sometimes not-so-merry England.

Finding that we were still far too early, and feeling parched and desperate for the loo, we meandered across the Pacific Coast Highway towards the Beach Chalet, a beautifully decorated building at the end of Golden Gate Park and mooched once more amongst the souvenirs and the postcards before noticing that it seemed to have acquired a restaurant that we didn't recollect.

So we headed upstairs and sat at the bar drinking one of their "Special" Lemonades each, an order which appeared to perplex the bartender almost as much as the stupidly large tip we gave him when we realised that we didn't really want to accumulate any more fiddling small change.

Then we meandered back downstairs, took another long look at the murals, headed outside to snap a couple of last snapshots - including one last bird who remains suitably unidentifiable from the blurry result I got - looked at each other and decided that we were indeed, as ready as we were ever likely to be to go home.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (28) - LEAVING SANTA CRUZ

NOVEMBER 12

After another rather spectacular breakfast at the "Pacific Blue", we packed up the car and left Santa Cruz for what was going to be the "last leg" of our "Road Trip" heading back up the coast to San Francisco to spend the last couple of days of our holiday there before heading home on the evening flight to Heathrow on Friday evening.

Of course we'd barely got half a mile before we pulled over on West Cliff Drive to look at the rather magnificent view it offered of Santa Cruz Pier.

Having decided once again not to visit the Surfing Museum, we did, however pull into the "Twenty Minutes Maximum" Parking Lot overlooking the "Natural Bridges State Park" to look at a positive plethora of Pelicans as they perched on the rocks below, which turned out to be a place where twenty minutes would really never, ever be long enough, not least because of the strange interactions between the more elderly Car Park Regulars which appeared to be going on, as they strolled up to cars as if they were complete strangers, then hopped into the passenger seat as if they were old friends.

All probably very innocent, I'm sure, but then, in life generally, I've always been such an innocent that I'm usually  the last to understand about any shenanigans that have been going on, when everyone else has "known about it for years..."

But I digress...

So, twenty minutes we were given, and twenty minutes we took, even though, towards the end of the time, I had to virtually drag the Beloved away from what had fast become her very favourite birds indeed, despite some last-minute Curlew spotting, and the vague sense that the Park Ranger over there in the booth taking money for the proper, all day, car park, didn't look as if he'd mind if we stayed longer.

There's always the troubling, and highly secret matter of those devious little "number plate recognition" systems to think about, though...

Still, it was the Pelicans that we most remember, and that huge cluster of them just sitting there, as far below them a huge cluster of humans went about their own, equally bizarre, pastimes, remains a strong and powerful memory of a morning that otherwise had us feeling fever so slightly melancholy as we came to terms with the sense of an ending approaching.

In fact, when we look back upon this fortnight, I suspect that, if we manage to recollect any of it at all, we really might start referring to it as our "Pelican Holiday..."

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (27) - SANTA CRUZ

NOVEMBER 11

Our day in Santa Cruz was, once again, planned to be spent in the pursuit of wildlife watching, and, according to the maps we had, a lot of this could be done, we believed, on foot and within the boundaries of the town itself.

With this in mind, and having had a most satisfying breakfast at our hotel, we ventured forth with our tourist map to hand in the general direction of what was called "Neary Lagoon" and, having stood around for a while beside what we suspected to be the only roundabouts in the entire country loking a little confused, we decided that the municipal-looking children's play area near to the railroad tracks was probably not the way in, and headed up West Cliff Drive and along Bay Street instead, in what, initially at least, appeared to be a bit of a wrong direction.

However, running at the side of the street along much of Bay Street was "La Barranca Park" which was an peaceful open area with walkways and benches and trees and plants and flowerbeds, and, despite the passing traffic and the wire fence running around the perimeter of the water treatment works, we saw our first Hummingbirds of the morning and some large Raptors passing by overhead.

Eventually, more by luck than judgement (or map-reading skill), we came to a railway crossing and beyond it (and through another children's play area), we found the entrance to Neary Lagoon and ventured inside, not really sure what to expect, given all of the urban construction that was surrounding it, but we were more than pleasantly surprised to find a lovely little waterpark positively teeming with Ducks and Coots and several other water birds just there, right in the middle of all that industry and housing.

And, to be fair, it was all rather lovely, with all of the rather impressive boardwalks which had been constructed, just to walk around and see all of the wildlife, and we stayed for quite some time as it turned out to be a pretty peaceful haven that several of the local population seemed to use as a convenient "cut through" on their way across town, although we did wonder just how many of them ever just stop and spend some time just enjoying the place itself in such a "busy, busy" culture.

Naturally, when we emerged at the other side, we found ourselves at the back of the very same municipal-looking children's play area that we'd decided to dismiss earlier on with a confident "Well, it couldn't possibly be there...!" which only goes to show, I suppose, just how very dependent upon the Sat-Nav I'd become...

Or that the signage in any foreign country makes perfectly good sense to the local population, but is baffling and confusing to everybody else...

After a brief yet well-timed return to our hotel (because it turned out that they'd accidentally set our key cards for one day instead of two which might have caused problems...), we set off in the car to the UCSC Arboretum which was somewwhere my Beloved had been particularly eager to see, given that it housed areas containing plants from several nations including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and promised much in the potential spotting of Hummingbirds.

And with that, it really did not disappoint.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (25) - MONTEREY TO SANTA CRUZ

NOVEMBER 10

Suffering slightly after giving in to that fourth course at "Cibo" the previous evening because we found the idea of the Pear Tart just too good to resist, we got up early and headed out to the "Wild Plum" once again for a far lighter breakfast than we otherwise might have had, before returning and checking out and heading in what might be regarded as the "wrong" direction for a while.

This was because we'd planned another bird-watching day as we meandered back up the coast to our next destination, and the rather lovely State Park at Point Lobos had so beguiled us on our previous visit to the area that we felt that the ten miles further south it took us - incidentally the furthest south that we would travel in the entire fortnight - was very worth it.

As we pulled up into a surprisingly busy car park, after paying a friendly Park Ranger the entrance fee so that we could put receipt on the windscreen which would have allowed us free entry to several other State Parks that day if we wished it, we couldn't help but notice how windy it was, and indeed another Park ranger did point us off in the direction of a trail which would take us away from the headland but keep us out of the wind, and we decided to spend a happy hour trundling around that, once I'd stopped taking pictures of the blue birds that I'd noticed hanging around the place.

It was a beautiful and remarkably unspoilt spot, given that you had views right across the back back towards Monterey itself and that, on a good day (as we'd found last time) there was a very good chance of seeing Sea Otters along with the usual bird life and mammals that we were still not quite getting used to seeing with such regularity.

It's obviously quite a spot for photographers, too, given that we spotted a man (with his bored looking partner) spending absolutely ages setting his camera up on a tripod which implied that he was particularly taken with one empty looking tree.

We could only imagine that he knew something that we didn't, and that something wonderful would eventually perch there.

Well, either that, or he particularly liked its bark.

After that we braved the lashing winds and headed out towards the headlands to enjoy the almost ubiquitous Pelicans, the seals, and the bracing, lashing waves, before returning to the car and setting our sights northwards with thoughts of home and the approaching end of our holiday.

But that was still several days away and we had decided to seek out another bird watching spot which had been recommended to us by both the helpful volunteer lady on the seafront at Monterey the previous day, and the gentleman who was an avid birder and employee of the Monterey Bay Aquarium who came over and chatted to us when we were looking once more at the Peregrine that had taken up residence there.

"You must try to find some time to visit Elkhorn Slough" (pronounced "sloo") they had both said, and so we set "Min" the task and she led us there, and, although we were disappointed to find the gates to what appeared to be the "official" park firmly closed, we persevered and found a rather abandoned looking car park next to a railway track and decided to pull up there.

After a certain amount of exploration, it turned out that this was indeed a genuine nature reserve and we followed the path along the side of the Slough until we reached a rather impressive bridge/boardwalk, and we might have spent several hours there with the binoculars and cameras if I hadn't suddenly remembered that we'd left the Sat-Nav and the Beloved's backpack containing her passport and wallet on full view when we'd parked the car, and those one or two lonely looking trucks that had also been in the car park when we'd pulled in suddenly seemed - in my mind at least - to have been full of sinister-looking criminal types.

Of course, having dashed back to the car we were lucky and all was well and secure, because bird watchers are, by their very nature, lovely, lovely people who would never do such a thing as steal our stuff, even in a land of opportunity such as this where providing such opportunities really are your own fault.

We got back to the car park just as a pair of Otters swam up and so we watched them play and eat for a while, and I got embroiled in a conversation with a gentleman in another truck which pulled up.

He apparently went there as often as he could to unwind when he finished work for the day, which seemed like a very good way to be living your life, if you ask me.

He also said that he'd been coming there for years and had only ever seen Otters there once before, and so it seems that, once again, we were proving to be very lucky indeed when it came to getting opportunities to see actual wildlife in the actual wild.

Yes, I know that nothing we'd seen was particularly uncommon, but nevertheless it's pretty uncommon to a couple of amateurs from Derbyshire.

So, just when we were starting to believe that we were being very lucky indeed, a Pelican landed on the jetty just in front of us and we were in the very unusual position of being just a few yards from a Pelican and a pair of Sea Otters, both of which were within a few yards of each other.

Starry-eyed and amazed at our luck, we got back into the car and set off towards Santa Cruz once again, only to pull up at the side of the road within a mile at another lovely spot where far more Egrets than we might have expected had gathered, whilst a whole host of other birds circled overhead.

Luckily we got back into the car before the distant train whistle that we'd heard whilst standing there had transmogrified into the actual (and seemingly endless) train turned up, otherwise I'd be boring myself rigid with several hundred photographs of some passing flatbed rail carriages on these long, dark, midwinter evenings.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (24) - PELICAN PETE

NOVEMBER 09 (Cont'd)

I was getting rather impatient with the Beloved as she dawdled behind me taking her pictures of the Gulls and Cormorants.

"C'mon, c'mon! You'll never get closer to a Pelican than this!"

Knowing that she had expressed a deep fondness for the Pelicans we'd been seeing as we travelled along the coast, I was delighted to spot one not twenty feet away from me as I looked over the wall of the promenade at Monterey, and was desperately worried that it might fly off before she'd had chance to see it...

Still oblivious to what I was waving my arms about and pointing for, eventually she caught up with me as I excitedly explained to her that we were closer to a Pelican than we'd ever been before and, as I insisted upon explaining at great, great length, over and over again (I'm really not an easy person to be around, I know...) "You'll never get closer to a Pelican than this!"

And so, we got more than a little bit giddy, took far, far too many pictures of the various Pelicans that we saw as they went through their bizarre flapping motions and that strange head movement where it looks as if they're going to turn themselves inside-out, and loitered around for far, far longer than we might otherwise have done, before continuing on our way along the sea-front and, eventually, onto another wharf about a half mile up the coast from the main one.

This was the wharf with the Coastguard vessels moored alongside it, and an Egret which took so long looking into the water looking for some fresh fish that I begin to suspect that it may very well still be standing there now, as well as the large amount of seals and sea-lions lurking on a land-spit that was a restricted government area and which featured in the photographs attached to my earlier description of our day in Monterey.

But before we got to that point, I happened to look over the fence at the side of the wharf and, sitting on a rock not five feet away from me was a Pelican, a juvenile we believe, and one which was obviously detemined to disprove my asseertion that "You'll never get closer to a Pelican than this!"

We immediately decided to call him Pete, and we watched him for ages.

In fact he was still there when we walked back from photographing the seals and we took another load of pictures of him then, too.

Because sometimes in life you just know that  you'll never get closer to a Pelican than that...!"

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (19) - POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE

NOVEMBER 07

We had decided to use Santa Rosa as a base for revisiting the same Point Reyes National Seashore which we had briefly visited on the first full day of our trip, and so we got up in Santa Rosa fully intending to drive the third-odd miles to Point Reyes Station and were rather surprised to find ourselves battling through the rush hour on the Freeway in the sort of thick, dense fog that could only remind me of home.

Of course, it wasn't exactly unexpected. After all, it was November, and coastal California is notorious for its sea fogs, but we hadn't quite imagined that it might appear this far inland. Still, there's always something rather appealing about low-lying mist, and, as we left the Freeway and found ourselves travelling through the coastal hills, we were able to see some beautiful views as we climbed above the cloud line.

Soon afterwards we arrived in Point Reyes Station and parked up, and headed into the Station House Cafe for a very welcoming and very welcome late breakfast, before mooching around what seemed to be a rather pleasant little town which had at least one slightly anachronistic-seeming little nicknack shop that swallowed up more of the Beloved's resources.

Then we drove a little further back down the road to Bear Valley Visitor Center and walked the half-mile "Earthquake Trail" that we had decided against attempting upon the previous Sunday morning.

It wasn't a difficult walk by any means, although the lovely little lad who was walking it with his mother seemed to make it far longer than it needed to be by choosing to cross over the little bridge several times, before taking a short cut (that he obviously knew well) back to the car park. Meanwhile, our version of the walk took a little longer than planned because we found that we were a few yards behind a visiting school party which we were reluctant to overtake, and from which we learned much, even though most of the information was being read out from the helpful boards that were dotted along the trail.

As far as being an "Earthquake Trail" went, it might have been a little disappointing for anyone expecting to be rocked and rolled by the shifting of the earth, or to see the ruins of mighty structures, but, half-way along, you do get to see the fence that was shifted sixteen feet by one of several "Big Ones" which have shaped and shaken the area over the past century, and that is something that makes you stop and think, especially when everything below your feet seems so "rock solid" (whatever that may mean…) and you are standing on the actual and infamous San Andreas Fault, a fault, incidentally, that was reported to be under immense stress at the time of our visit, and liable to shift at any moment.

 With that in mind, we returned to the car and headed over to one of the excellent bird watching areas that had been suggested to us the previous Sunday, Abbotts Lagoon.

After driving for about half an hour, we arrived at a fairly deserted car park to find it surrounded by thick fog, but, game as ever, we nevertheless walked the mile or so down towards the lagoon itself and enjoyed a fun couple of hours spotting lots of birds including seabirds, waders and raptors in the fog, before heading back to the car park just before the fog began to clear and reveal to us just how close to the Pacific Ocean we'd been.

A couple sitting on a bench as we got back reliably informed us that there were other sights to be seen further towards the coast, and so we set off, only to turn back fifteen minutes later as the road deteriorated and the fog closed in on us again.

However, this "missed opportunity" was not completely a waste of time because we managed to spot several birds of prey just sitting on the fence posts as we travelled back along that long, lonely, and rather mist-shrouded road, some of which even paused for long enough for us to take a snapshot or two of them wondering quite what it is that we strange humans were up to.

And so, after actually having one of those "bird watching" days that we'd sort of planned the entire holiday around, we booted up "Min" and headed back towards our motel in Santa Rosa, stopping on the way at the Mall - a sudden burst of "civilisation" which did not sit at all well with our day in the great outdoors - and settled for a meal in "Mary's Pizza Shack" in which I, perhaps strangely, failed completely to order a pizza.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (13) - POINT ARENA

NOVEMBER 05 (Cont’d)

Sometimes I get a bit obsessed with an idea, and, even though the idea might be interesting, my execution of it can be something of a let down.

Such it was when, whilst enjoying the spectacular scenery around Point Arena lighthouse, I noticed a row of those roadside poles carrying the electricity or telephone wires out towards the lighthouse itself and thought that they might make the sort of interesting image that fills the pages of all those photography books of mundane yet – in the right hands - photogenic roadside things that I find so very collectable.

So I set off towards the road trying to frame several of them nicely in my viewfinder and got a couple of okay – if not very interesting really – pictures, and was about to give up after admonishing myself about how ridiculous I was being thinking that I could take any photograph worthy of comparison with those old books of mine when the Ravens, or Rooks, or Crows, or whatever they were, arrived.

So, okay, none of my pictures are ever likely to adorn a book jacket or anything like what the voices in my head might have been saying as I was taking the dullest set of pictures in the history of photography (the mud flats of South Wales set I once took as an Art Student notwithstanding…)but I did manage to get a reasonably framed picture of a telephone pole, and a very nice picture of a Raven… or Rook… or Crow.

HOLIDAY, NOVEMBER 2014 (12) - MANCHESTER BEACH

NOVEMBER 05 (Cont’d)

Sometimes you just get lucky.

Sometimes, even I get lucky(!)

As we were returning to the car, leaving Manchester Beach and about to head off towards Point Arena lighthouse, I took a quick look at the small hillock masking the view of the beach from the car park, noticed that there was a bit of a path worn into it by previous ramblings, and wondered whether there might be a nice view of the beach to be photographed from the top of it.

Naturally, the young couple who’d climbed up it a few minutes earlier, (presumably stimulating my peripheral vision enough for me to notice the hillock at all), and who were now settling down nicely in a hollow a few hundred yards ahead of me might have been less pleased to find some long-lenses fellow strolling along behind them, but they swiftly vanished from my mind as I realized that the dunes stretched on for those several hundred yards and more, and the beach was not to be seen.

What I did see, however, not so very far over to my left, was a row of fence poles and perched upon one of them was what looked to me to be a very fine ooking young raptor.

I swiftly ran off a swift photograph or two before wondering whether, just whether, it might still be there if I scrambled quickly back down the hill towards the car park and took the other little path running next to the very fence upon which it was sitting.

So I hurried around and got to a point close enough to get a couple of decent shots, and I tried to get a little closer and get a couple more… and still it sat there, and it continued to sit there until I was within about eight feet of it, before finally flying off having given me what I consider to be one of my luckier moments of the entire trip.