Birds-Eye View
In country areas people with light Aeroplanes photograph farms and other buildings every 5 years or so, and then months later try to find you from the pictures, and visit to try to sell you the pictures. Sometimes the price is hair raising, sometimes quite reasonable.
This one was taken in October 1996 from the South West. Of course we don't have any choice in time-of-day, angle etc.
The dark shadow of the house effectively conceals the major pond outside the kitchen window where the moorhen breed.
The top right pond is the 'duck pond' - look
carefully to see why.
This is a biped's eye view of the pond in the top left of the Birds eye view, called Round pond. It should help give you a better idea of scale.
This pond was first filled in early 95 using water pumped from a ditch. Unfortunately, something with sharp teeth had eaten a 1 inch hole under a fold in the liner, and it took many weeks of attempts to refill it to find the leak. A 1/4 ton liner with 50 tons of water and mud in it is a nightmare to try to pump out, inspect, and repair
Summer 1995 was a severe drought as you can see from the state of the grass, the field behind, and the fact that the water level is a foot down. The island is deliberately overheight as they always slump during the first couple of years.
In Spring 1996 the Moorhens built their 3rd non-foxproof nest in the by then much more developed reed-bed. In desperation we cut all the reeds down to make it less attractive, at which point she finally got the message and nested on one of the other islands. We thought it would look decimated all summer, but a few weeks later you couldn't see the difference. Established water plants have an amazing capacity for recovery given unpolluted water.
It has now
reached September 2004 and the flurry
of aircraft taking pictures ceased after the image
at the top. The Millennium project of
downloadable Aerial photos of the UK is cheap
but turned out rather poor so we haven't tried
buying the publishing rights for our patch.
For an idea of how things have changed here is a
2004 image of the same (now rather overgrown)
pond taken from as near the same place as can be
managed but from higher up so you can actually
see some water. You are seeing only the left side
of the pond to the centre of the island. All that
grey matting is 'lost' under inches of vegetation,
but still helps keep it moist.
This one was taken in May 2006 as a
view from the North East. The Duck
pond is at the top left and you can
now see the pond by the house.
Round pond is just below left of
centre and nearly lost in the trees
when viewed from the North.
The fruit trees in the original garden are in blossom. Black poplars (right edge and some leafless trunks lower centre) flowers early but make leaves very late.
What a difference 10 years makes!