Mostly doggies

...and a bit of Newhaven beach. But first doggies. :-)



This morning we went back to Piddinghoe sailing lake as I wanted to stalk the grey heron. And there it was! On that little island in the middle of the lake.



Not a great photo, but here it is. Looking rather pissed off, actually.



I hope I can catch him closer one of these days. Anyway, during our walk we came across the two Rhodesian ridgebacks we meet in the area every now and then.



The fairer coloured one is a little old and doesn't play, but the younger one does... the only problem being that Zebedee has to be mostly airborne in order to keep up with him.






In the evening we went to Castle Hill and met with Magic. Zebedee was full of kisses again.



When he had given enough kisses (or rather: when Magic couldn't put up with him any longer), Zebedee went back to chasing rabbits, who quickly ran away and hid in the spiky shrubbery.



When we were about to go back, we saw the handsome Benson.



After that, we went down on the beach. I thought I'd get some sunset photos with rocks and the sea in the foreground and the setting sun... but there were no clouds in the sky, and I couldn't really get out to the rocks as there is a wide strip of slippery seaweed in between, so I took some shots nearer to the shore instead.



It is quite surreal, really, what with the chalk and stuff.



Even in colour.

Birds and butterflies

We walked along the river to Piddinghoe this morning and I was hoping to see the grey heron that has been teasing me a few times in the past (when I haven't had my long lens with me!). But there was no sign of the heron, so I took some photos of butterflies along the river bank.



My first ever shot of a small tortoiseshell. You don't see them very often around here.



Swans with cygnets... (is that the second batch of the summer? or third?)



Anyway, as we got nearer to the Piddinghoe sailing lake and I saw that there were loads of geese swimming on it, I admit to some shocking behaviour: I thought I'd run towards the lake and make all the geese set off in a frightened flight and I'll get a brilliant picture of dozens of geese taking off from the lake surface. I know - not very nice to disturb the geese's peaceful morning like that. But Zebedee was playing with me and he headed for the lake, too. As I got very close to the edge of the lake, Zebedee was already there by the reeds and long grasses and had just scared some other bird away. Some really big bird. About the size of a grey heron, in fact.



Damn! I missed it! How clever of me to try and scare away the geese and ending up scaring away the one bird that I didn't want to scare, if it happened to be anyway nearby. And the geese were still exactly where they were before - didn't bat an eyelid at our incredibly scary dash towards the lake. (They probably don't even have eyelids, mind you.)



Not even when a swan flew over them.






In the meantime, the grey heron was on the other side of the lake, not in a very photogenic environment.





One of these days I'm going to get a proper photo of it.