We hosted a party for Caroline’s birthday last night, this morning she and Helen managed to get to church (9:15 service), which impressed me give the partying the night before. I got up and watched the exciting Korean grand prix, had some breakfast and tidied up a bit. The weather was crisp and sunny so I headed out for a walk around Ashridge.
I parked in the small car park just up the hill from Alburgh, which is if the beaten track away from the monument area. I headed in the opposite direction from the monument the plan was to get some picture of fungi and see if I could catch site of some of the deer in the area.
I followed a bridleway, passed a very big house and eventually came across some smaller houses which were at the end of of a track. They seemed had a great location, a couple were semi-detached and bizarrely one of the front gardens had a couple of horses grazing. The garden was normal front garden size and the grass was nice and short!
I then headed towards the road that runs through Ashridge, which meant crossing the very large grassy heath area, when I spotted no less that 4 green wood peckers all very close to each other. You could see their red heads poking up above the grass. After crossing the road I headed in to the woods the other side, where I started to here the stags calling, which they do at this time of the year to attract females and make their presence known to other males in the area. I heard a few quite close but only got fleeting glimpses of the deer them selves.
I got some some pictures of some fungi in the silver birch areas, but they were not at the best they were showing their age a bit. It reminded me that I need to read over the LX3 manual again I seem to spend too much time figuring out how to change settings which I know exist I just can’t figure out how to make contact with the right bits of the menu system.
I then heard a stag really close by so I slowly and quietly made my way toward the source of the noise, I was then lucky enough to see a stag and 3 females hanging around what looked like a stand. I was there for quite a few minutes behind a tree which helped support my binoculars, I got some cracking view of the stag calling. Eventually they got spooked by some other walkers in the woods. Time to head over to Hillside fro some of Caroline’s birthday cake.