In The Dark

Darker mornings like these can be rewarding, a welcome change from the high contrast of bright sunlight and often right for autumn colours. But they cruelly expose the limitations of the camera, mine at least. This red deer was obviously a stag, his head had the male characteristics and none of the softness and big ears of the hinds. But his antlers were hard to make out.

He may have been a young animal or one with distorted antlers. I don't recall seeing him before, and it was not easy to see him today.

One of the incidental pleasures coming from looking back to the surroundings of Blacka is the sight of the cows grazing the adjoining fields.

As with flocks of migrating birds seen against the sky they dispose themselves across the setting in a way that is never exactly the same but could also never be anything else. But today's dim light does not score as many points as yesterday when their positions were extended by lengthy early shadows.

Today's comparative gloom did manage to lift briefly as the clouds parted to allow a few seconds of brightness.