Flying A New Murmuration

The light was wonderful on Sunday - the sun actually warm on my face. The serious bird watchers were out in force with giant binoculars and ferocious long lensed cameras. We stood amongst them in the newly built bird hide on the Exe estuary at Topsham and watched the comings and goings of the flocks of birds in the distance. As we didn't have any binoculars,

I snapped these gorgeous auburn headed ducks in the still waters

of the nearest tributary.

One minute they were snoozing and the next heading out en masse

to the wide open river waters, 

 followed by an amazing murmuration overhead. I wonder if they know they're cutting out the pattern of a huge bird in flight in the blue cloth of the sky.

The sun didn't reach this shallow stream, running alongside the field- halted in its tracks, frozen solid.

From the viewing platform looking out to Haldon Belvedere,

the mud flats like ribbons of grey silk,

home to the Avocets,

 now safe and breeding again thanks to the marvellous work of the RSPB.

Such busyness in the sky on Sunday.......

On Saturday we were setting off to Okehampton in search of its castle when my husband's Renault wouldn't start. The RAC man diagnosed a dying battery and suggested a new one. For months one thing after another has been going wrong with his car and instead of spending any more money on it we have decided to change it for a smaller one for me and my husband will take over my current Toyota  - as I will probably be driving longer than he will. At least my husband has reluctantly agreed to this plan.

For weeks, even though I've had a lot of advice and help, I  have been feeling anxious and overwhelmed, panicky and incompetent and under pressure to find the right second hand car. It all came to head on Saturday with the failing battery in the Renault and the prospect of spending yet more money on a dying car and me in a wobbly heap on the kitchen floor.

After a while it came to me that instead of digging myself deeper into my I'm hopeless and pathetic pit I could pick up the phone and talk to a friend - even though it was late on a Saturday afternoon and I'd have to smash through my tall picket fence of intruding into someone's space, taking up time, being a nuisance, being needy - asking for help - yet again.

So in the end I did pick up the phone and my friend said yes, of course and his wife said come to tea as well.

So that's how it happened that my husband now has a new battery in his Renault and I'm in the clear and grateful space of looking out for a Honda Jazz to test drive. And I'm re-writing my old script of I have to do it all on my own.... flying a new murmuration in the blue sky of my life.