A Cold Start Walking down Butt Lane Gt Wilbraham

It was a beautiful morning for a walk today after some overnight snow.  Walking out towards the sun made for tricky photography, but returning with the sun over my shoulder gave me some fabulous blue skies.  Trees, hedges and seed heads against the sky as well as the pylons marching robotically into the distance.

Half Term Visit to Linton Zoo

We took all of the grandchildren except Barnie to Linton Zoo today.  Linton Zoo is set up primarily as a conservation and breeding centre for endangered species, rather than an entertainment.

For photographic purposes the big cats are always attractive and the Lions obliged whilst enjoying and after lunch rest.  To lose the inevitable mesh between the camera and the cat, I opened the lens wide and focused manually on the cat, but the lions insisted on posing in front of the distant fence. The Amur Tiger was more obliging in her chosen rest spot. On the cuteness scale, the Crowned Lemur and the cotton-topped Tamarind took a lot of beating

The senior male lion sunbathing - one of his wives behind

 Up comes his son...

 A gentle reminder of wh is boss...

The Amur Tigress (endangered species) the largest remaining tiger species living in Northern China, North Korea and Russia

Autumn's coming!

I visited Brandon Woods this morning in search of Fungi.  When I arrived I saw that they are advertising guided fungus foraging tomorrow, so I set out optimistic that there would be lots to see.  Although I found some, there were nowhere near as many as I have seen in previous years, so I hope that those paying £25 each tomorrow have better luck!  However there was enough to keep me busy for a few hours and I was pleased to eventually find some fly agaric emerging under an enormous beech tree.  It is interesting to see how their white "warty" spots develop from a white skin covering the whole fungus which is split into spots as it grows.  I shall return to Brandon next week to observe changes.  I think that I should be hoping for rain?

  

And now those Fly Agarics...

 

There were lots of other signs of autumn to be seen: