JamesT

I'm pretty sure it's a tiny spider, there are four legs visible on the right and also the shape is typical of a spider.

Yet another great set. That grub looks like something from the Burgess Shales!

Kites are primarily scavengers, so they are mostly looking out for road kill (although they will take a baby rabbit or young waterbird). On one occasion, something (a cat) had left a dead rat on the patio, so I put it in the middle of the lawn, and while I was in the shed I saw a kite swoop down and take it away.

32.79280, -105.81782 is the (over-precise) location of my back porch then, according to OpenStreetMap. It's actually about the same altitude as Quito, between 9200 and 9300 feet.

Three O's (2 × Olympus + Okaya) Or maybe it should be four as it's an oak table.

To me they look rather like hummingbirds.

Putting down an early marker with Grove Common Lock.

This is roughly the view I was hoping to get a better image of. This was taken last year. hand-held, 35mm and very underexposed

From just after I used to go up there. I remember the three rivers, "River Irt", "River Esk" & "River Mite". Always seemed to be River Esk in steam when I was there.

Sorry to be a pooper, but I don't think its a cormorant. The beak is wrong and the immature cormorants are fairly uniform dark on top (light underneath). I'm fairly sure it's a first year great crested grebe.

Very nice context. I assume that must be the "new" locomotive in the background as it doesn't look like any of the three I remember from the 1970's.

Two derelict locks on the Wilts & Berks canal (which since the local government reorganization of the '70's doesn't go through Berkshire). Large format shots. Elms Farm Lock I'd hoped to get one looking up into this one but I'd left it too late and there was a significant amount of water and an unknown depth of mud just below the lock. Grove Common Lock There is a restoration project under way, but most of what has happened is at the Wilts end.

I doubt the average raptor can tell the difference between a photographer with a long lens and a feral gamekeeper with a gun -- so better safe than sorry.

Actually it really is on a steep slope.

Meadow Pipit Ruffled Feathers Kestrel