The Weather relents, but not for long.

The lull in he weather, before the next rain storm, produced a beautifully benign day. A walk round Bockhill, with no real hopes of any birds of note was pleasant.

Walking to the end of the houses along Kingsdown Road leads to open farmland and a wide vista across some rolling folds running north east down to hope point and beyond.

Looking down to Hope Point the distant wind farm is just visible through binoculars. I wonder if it has been able to work during the high winds of late? I believe that once the speed is beyond a certain point the have to be shut down, but I'm not sure how high a wind they can cope with. In a small gap on the left I could just make out the cliffs along the Ramsgate side of Pegwell Bay.

Although it has been VERY windy for weeks, it has been mild, and in the sunshine there was certainly a look of spring. Some birds obviously felt the same and as I waked along I heard several birds singing at full throttle. The first was a Chaffinch, just along from the house, and a little further the songs of Dunnocks and Wrens battled the wind to be heard.

The line on the sea in the distance is where the waves form and break over the Goodwin Sands. It wasn't low enough to day, but at very low tides the sands become visible and bits of shipwreck are sometimes visible, and occasionally resting seals can be made out on the sands using a telescope.

Walking down the path towards the monument I was pleasantly surprised as to how easy the path was to negotiate. I had expected it to be under water at the bottom of the dip, as it was at one point last year, but it was soggy but not wet enough to wet my feet!

I did see a few trees down, but whether brought down by the wind or taken down  for other reasons I don't know. One thing the wind does seem to have done is flattened part of the plastic fence in the paddock. One can only hope that this might lead to it being replace with something less intrusive and more in sympathy with the environment. I'm sure the NT would say that it is cost effective, but judging be their membership numbers and the size of my  annual subscription, I'm sure they could manage to find a elegant corral for the ponies.

In the Village, the last of my songsters was a Song Thrush that was amongst the best I've heard. Although it's a fair way from out garden I think this is probably the bird I heard singing early yesterday morning as I sorted out our recycling! The pond in Chapel lane is as full as it can get, and the eleven Mallards there today were looking quite content. They haven't seen the weather map at the bottom of the bog, which shows a monumental storn on the way!