Better than a poke in the eye...

I checked the weather forecast last night and it looked pretty grim for today, so I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of sunshine around this morning. There was the possibility of a trip out somewhere this afternoon at this rate, but then events took a somewhat downward turn: the sky started turning decidedly grey, the drizzle started to fall and then to cap it all some Viakal (limescale remover) splashed in my eye. Boy did it sting, so I washed my eye out with water and sought medical advice - I asked my wife, who happens to be an A&E nurse, what the best thing to do would be. To cut a very long story short, I ended up visiting our local hospital for a check up, greeted on my arrival by 13 mallards waddling past the entrance, and ended up helping no 14 out of the A&E entrance. Around an hour later, as Julia was working and none of the boys was hungry, we decided we would pop over to Cavenham Heath for a walk along by the River Lark. The final shower of the afternoon gave us its blessing and departed as we arrived, and my eldest boy spotted a little owl sitting on the top of a piece of old dead tree. He just sat there as we watched him from the car, before we left him to his thoughts.
We parked up and headed off alongside the river, as the sun started to try and shine on the departing rain clouds.
A swan with four cygnets was busy preening on the far bank, quite unperturbed by our presence, and we saw a few reed buntings and sedge warblers, constantly calling as the afternoon ebbed away.
We were really pleased to hear and then see far off on the top of a distant bush, a cuckoo, which later flew off at quite a height. The heath is fairly bare at times, vegetation kept low by a healthy population of rabbits, and some sheep, with jackdaws nesting in some of the nearbly old trees. Stone curlews breed here, but we didn't see any today, nor stonechat or wheatear, which turn up from time to time. Green woodpeckers are fairly common and sure enough we saw two fly across our path later, and a pair of curlews, with their plaintive call, passed overhead.
Our journey back home took us by choice by the very edge of the heath, adjoining farmland; a quiet road, but often rewarding and today was no exception. A buzzard left his fence post a few yards ahead of the car and made his way slowly over to a belt of trees in the distance. I would never have expected to see one of these a few years ago, but now I see them regularly along the A14 and down the A11 - always a pleasing sight. Further along a couple of fine red deer stood warily in a field of crops, and decided against hanging around long enough for me to get any shots. The evening light certainly enhanced their colouring. My final photo of the day was of the vipers bugloss, whose spires of blue brightened up the dry breckland landscape.
A really rewarding hour or two, and far from the washout that the afternoon had threatened to be. My eye had claimed that accolade, literally, and now I've a course of drops to make sure that it mends properly.