APRIL MORNING

First let me say that early morning any month of the year is not my natural habitat. But we had an 8:30 am appointment, and I had to be up. Notice I didn't say "awake". But the drive into the village where we had to be, was worth the pain of being up before time. Recent heavy rains have kept the little river that runs past our house, in flood. By mid summer, it is a tiny creek in many places that you could step over, or shallow enough to walk through, but at this time of the year, it is mighty. The banks turn into watermeadows and are often filled with ducks and geese. On a sunny day, this is lovely to see, and even on a rather snarly day like this one, it's something to enjoy as we drive along. We took a different way home, and the fields of cut-back corn stalks were filled with geese. A huge flock - many hundres of them, turned the sky black as they came to land in one field so they could rest for the day and glean the muddy corn rows of left-over corn. Something startled one group who had already settled, and there was a sudden glory of wings as 50 or so birds rose like a living fan out of the stubble. Fox? All through the cut corn stalks, if we looked closely, we could see long black necks bobbing along as the geese went walk-about. There is something about geese that amuses me, although I don't particularly like coming nose to beak with them. Long necks, short geese tempers!