The strange thing

This time I took a trowel. And I dug.

But it wouldn't budge. The roots were over and under it.

Still no idea what it is.*

I also returned to the Guardian Oak and there I found two nests inside the trunk!

There were also some lovely holes and crannies for bats or bees.

And behind, a thrush's thrashing stone - where the bird breaks open snail shells.

You can't really see in this picture how many snail shells were littered around the stone.

I set off to explore some wooded area alongside a stream and got excited as I thought I had found signs of an otter. There were paw marks on a sandy bit of shore that I couldn't reach and alongside an area that looked as it someone had rolled there. Someone otter-sized. I began to investigate.

I know - the evidence is hardly convincing. That last picture shows something that looked like a cow pat. I couldn't work out what it was. The mammal tracking book says otter shit smells of jasmine so I bent down to sniff even though it didn't look like otter shit. I have to say that the smell was not offensive. Was it like jasmine? Hmmmm... a little sweet but that was all my nasal paraphernalia could glean.

However, there was a badgers' sett.

And I saw where the badgers cross the river.

I also found the bank-side trees enthralling.

And then I came across a very special ash.

During this thing which was meant to be a run, I sat in the Guardian Oak and the interior seemed to have the acoustics of a cathedral so that the skylarks singing outside sounded as though the volume had been turned up. And I wondered if trees sense sound. Later, I listened to the ash by the river and heard the movement of his branches in the wind.

I also sat in the wood by the track and had the Merlin app on. So many birds. I watched some of them and was watched by a squirrel who scampered above me in the tree, waving her tail.

In the car, I sat and watched the birds eating the seed that I and some other person leave out. A lot of yellowhammers, dunnocks, a pair of robins, chaffinches and goldfinches, blue tits who chased off the much larger yellowhammers, great tits who were wary and a marsh tit who stayed longer than anyone else.

*While telling Dad about this, and showing him the pictures, I realised that the mystery thing is the bottom of a (large) wine bottle. How very appropriate. Still, I wonder how it got there???