Deer Park – Fingle Bridge:
Dried up leaves, seed pods and an alarming split up the trunk of a large beech. Thousands of flies in the bracken decided that my head and neck were irresistible so I did quite a bit of entirely ineffectual comedy arm waving. Hoverflies, a dipper and flies lining up to drink from the Teign (one of them clearly misjudged it), the shadow of a pond skater (every time they move each one sends out circular ripple patterns, so a flotilla of pondskaters is a bit like a shadow firework display – only to me, perhaps – and I haven’t captured it so you’ll have to take my word for it) – I didn’t notice at the time, but the streambed is covered in the sand-tubes of caddisfly larvae.
