The lakes

The British weather is notorious for its variety. Last night brought a veritable deluge and I awoke this morning to another grey dismal day, but within a couple of hours, the sky cleared to a beautiful sunny spectacle.
A five minute drive from the village lies a series of lakes. Only one of the them is of any real size, as they originated as gravel pits. Whilst the largest is utilised for water sports, the remainder are left to nature and the anglers. There is a stream flowing between some of the lakes and this had flooded its banks in places. Some of the footbridges over this stream only just managed to remain above the water level. The area between the lakes are partly left as scrub, and at the right time of year, these can abound with warblers including nightingales. For the moment, the only birds in this area were a few goldfinches, some green woodpeckers, the odd jay and the usual assortment of crows and magpies. The larger stretches of water held some small flotillas of tufted duck, otherwise, there were large numbers of coot, seagull (black headed) and the odd great crested grebe.