Down by the River

On Saturday I had a brief wander down by the river near my daughter’s riding school as I was a bit early to pick her up. It may not be entirely obvious that I was by a river as I neglected to take any photos of the actual river but never mind! As it was brief there are only a few photos to share.

As usual I find it hard to resist an unfurling fern, and I do rather like the lovely bokeh I got in the background:

The highlight of my wander was hearing an unfamiliar bird, and actually managing to spot it and get a half-decent photo! Near the river in a patch of what appeared to be scrubby willows were a pair of Willow Warblers! Don’t think I’ve ever knowingly seen one before. They look very similar to Chiffchaffs, but they definitely had a Willow Warbler sound, not the chiff-chaff song. They were hard to photograph as they were hopping around a lot, but I think this shot’s not too bad:

And finally I got my first photo of the year of a Swallow 🙂 I had seen a couple on my travels over the last week, but this was the first time I had a camera in my hand when a Swallow helpfully paused in it’s busyness: