...by the old canal

Regular readers might recall Sept 13th, we made reference to Diamond's old old friend-of-the-family, Ella, given to saying "I'm nearly 84, you know" as soon as she is past her 83rd Birthday. Well, she's currently "nearly 90" or so. Mum tells us that Ella, Bless Her, had become concerned that Diamond might be struggling for money, being "off work sick" and all that, and had offered to top up her phone card for her.

Diamond, touched by the generosity and sweet ness of this, tried to phone Ella back, but only getting the son ( "our Stanley" ) heard that Ella was out with her "fella". Apparently each Thursday, Ella goes out walking with her "young man" down by the old canal (the guy's got to be 75 if he's a day). How sweet is that? Go Ella.

The H and myself are whizzed off to Reculver for a walk, but the carpark, pub and the whole place are crawling with "Race of Life" push-bike riders (it's a Cancer Research charity thing). There's a queue to park. We turn tail and race up to the free, uncongested end, the Bishopstone carpark.

Dad has some fun helping a bloke launch a stunt-kite, and then we have some fun racing around barking at the ruffling, wind-scream whooshing noises of it as it whizzes low over head

Do you realise, this is our 700th posting? You'd think with that much practise, it should be quite interesting by now, wouldn't you........

Hope you're enjoying the weekend.
Deefski

Wet Weekend

Dad's home from work, but it's tanking down and shows every sign of being set in for a wet weekend. To be sure, the garden and the allotment need it badly but it'll be a bit miserable for Dad's deer-walk in Challock Forest tomorrow. He is guide tomorrow. No problem, he says. the deer can cope fine with the rain. It's the blustery winds that unsettle them, filling the forest with human scent well before the walking party tries to creep in undiscovered.

Ah well. We shall see what we shall see. Poor ol' Mum has a bad throat at present, so she's not even allowed to go visit Diamond, who's back into hospital for a final (we all hope) session of treatment.

Have a good weekend
Deefski

Does your Mum know you're out?

Meggie is still a bit painful on that foot where the vet, suspecting it was a growth, sliced a lumpy chunk out of one of her pads and then cauterised the surface. She can barely put weight on that foot, but looks so hopeful as Dad prepares us for the walk tonight, that she ends up getting a carry under his arm to the Rec, where she can amble about on the grass. Dad suggests none-too-subtly that she is not a slim and sylph-like baggage.

It turns out to be a nice session on the Rec. We meet a tiny tiny Springer called Bonny, whose (also very young) owner says is 10 weeks old. That seems very young to us, and we wonder whether she is fully innocculated (Bonny, not the owner!). Later. grown-up Spinger "LB" shows up and the contrast is amazing, Bonny being not much bigger than LB's head! Bonny, though, is a game little soul, and charges all three of us in that gangling, semi-co-ordinated way that 10 week old pups have.

We also meet old chum collie-cross Ben (him of the white flash chest, and white "peepy toes". He's all distracted by someone who has unwisely brought an on-heat JR bitch to the Rec, and was having to re-think the wisdom of this move. The numpty in charge of that one had never even conceived of the fact that it might be a better plan to walk her somewhere a bit quieter for the 2-3 weeks. Dad and his chums actually wondered whether he (the numpty) knew what "on heat" was. They had to patiently explain things as if to a young child.

One born every minute. Do their Mums know they're out?

Deefer

Didn't want to play.

Dad's back to the forest this morning, leaving a bleary eyed Mum to luxuriate under the duvet, and armed once again with the new lens, but this time, despite his best efforts, the deer do not want to play. These very long distance shots are the best he could do today.

First up a decent sized buck with partly palmated antlers, may be 6-7 years old but here, anyway, well away from the rutting stands, so maybe a "chancer" for later in the season - he'll have to bide his time while the big boys exhaust themselves. The Master-Buck, holding the stand will get so focussed on the job, he'll not even stop to eat, drink or sleep for the days he's in charge, so he can get pretty exhausted and will then get barged off the stand by the next pretender.

He'll go and have a serious lie-down and get back into eating and drinking to get his condition back up for the winter. His mission is to service as many does as he can while he's top dog, and once he's kicked off he can think about next year. Some, when they are 8-9 over-do it and simply go off and die of exhaustion. Our fine head of antlers in the hall were from a white-phase buck who died of, we believe, natural causes in the 2005 rut, probably in just such circumstances.

The second pic, again, at a fair distance, is of doe on the left, and her young male fawn on the right (probably born last spring). It's entertaining to watch these guys around the rutting stand. The big old bucks are stomping around and grunting and roaring in a bass-y male, testosterone charged way, with the younger bucks circling outside the stand waiting their chance. Then like bored children at a show that's mainly for the grown-ups, running around play-charging each other and bleating like little lambs or goat-kids are these year old fawns, with their Mums trying to keep them out of harm's way.

Hope you're weekend is going OK

Deefski

Not home yet...

With exams looming, Mum is off "to school" today to find out all about what they entail, calling in on Diamond on the way home for a cup of tea. We stay home with Dad who's of a mind to blitz the garden of its shagginess and piles of fallen (Paulownia) leaves. He is leppin' around with secateurs pruning all 4 apple trees, the two plums, the quince, the damson, the cherry and the greengage, producing a mountain of prunings which need to go through the shredder.

He rakes up any amount of big, crisp, dry Paulownia leaves, also for the compost, and a good 2 rubbish bags worth of the sword-like, sharp edged "cabbage palm" (Corylinus australis) leaves, which are no good for the compost as they never ever break down. Next it's hands and knees for a bit of trowelling out ground elder and finally a rake around and tidy up.

Finally we can go for a walk (H and I again - Meg's still a bit delicate), down to the boat yard where Dad wants to see if his favourite barge, the SB Greta is "home" yet. Owner Steve Norris uses it for charters through the Summer, based in Whitstable fishing harbour, but in the winter she holes up here, de-rigged and safe under her poly-tunnel round till about Easter, while she gets re-fettled. We didn't get to go out in her this Summer, never quite getting round to it, but I expect he had a good season - he's definitely had the weather for it.

As I write this Mum is rebelling. Trying to be good and stick to the dietary fare since we all returned from narrow boating like bloaters, she pleads that she can't be bothered tonight to eke out yay grams of this and that, so she's nipped off in the car to buy something soul-food-ish, calorific, delicious and rebellious.

Go Mum!
Deefski

Don't think we're in Kansas...

After all the frivolities of the day are over (Deer hunting, shopping, allotment harvesting etc), we (Haggis and I) finally get our proper walk. Dad has today off because under the new arrangement at work where he has to cover every 5th weekend, including being on site on the Saturday, he gets a compensatory Friday off.

The walk is still just H and myself because Meggie, whose vet visit last week involved having a chunk taken out of a front paw pad, and the opening cauterised, is not yet healed enough to be comfortable walking far on it.

We head off down the Abbey Fields towards the creek, in the course of which we meet dalmatian pup Woody, who is no bigger than Haggis, so presumably only a few weeks old, rather than months or years.

It's a warm breezy day and down along one of the drainage dykes, with cut reed-mace piled up everywhere, and bordered by a line of trees, the breeze and heat sets off a rather spectacular whirlwind. The spiral tracks over a pile of reedmace bits and suddenly we have a whirling column of reedmace bits heading straight for us. Nothing for it but to part-close your eyes from the flying straws and wait for it to whirl by.

We survived, and as far as I know, no munchkins or witches got involved, no houses flew, no cardiacally challenged lions or metallic figures, no appalling rhymes about being a "mouse" (mow-ess) and showing your prowess, and Dad was never wearing any red footwear. As far as I know, anyway.

Have a great weekend
Deefski

Back to the Forest

Not brilliant we freely admit, but better than anything else we've taken so far. These pics of the wild Fallow deer in Challock Forest, near Ashford in Kent. This in Dad's ongoing quest to take a "decent photo of the Challock Deer in their own forest". It's rutting season again, all be it not long started and the deer are still not fully focussed on it (which means they spot humans lurking behind trees really early; when they're really into the rut their attentions are... um.... else where!)

You can see from these what we mean when we've said in the past that the Challock deer are "black phase". Fallow deer have phase colours like alsatian dogs and rabbits, varying from almost white (they aren't albino - just very pale but with properly pigmented eyes and skin), through the text book "bambi" fawn with white spots, through to these dark ones called "black" believed to have been originally a Dutch population used to stock the forest when it was the King's hunting patch.

First up is an old buck who would have big palmated (webs of bone between the prongs of his antlers) antlers had he not broken one. He's at a bit of a distance. Closer is the best shot, of the young buck with single prong antlers. He'd be called a "pricket", and is probably only 2-3 years old and just getting interested in the rut (but doomed to get nowhere against the big boys for 6-7 more years yet, poor aul' thing). Finally a group making off. Notice the big "master-buck" to the right, with a good spread of fully palmated antlers. He'd be 8-10 years old. Next to him the only doe (no antlers) in the photo, although out of shot, this group had half a dozen more does.

Notice we're using the expression "bucks and does", which is the correct term for fallow deer. In UK, we only use stags and hinds for Red deer, Roe deer and (strangely) the smaller sikas, muntjacs etc.

Not bad huh? More pics as and when Dad can bet back out there early in the morning. He nips out at 7-ish when it's still fairly dark, and gets into position ready to try for a few pics as the light comes up.

We aren't allowed to go. There's this theory that dogs chasing about do not mix well with calm deer photography. I can't think why!

Deefer