Large, Little and In Between

You never know quite what you are going to see as you walk around the reserve.  Stopping to look and listen, something did not quite look right!  On closer inspection it was Roe Deer doe (the bucks are in velvet, growing their antlers) just stopping to look and listen.  We looked at each other whilst I was taking some photographs.  As nearly always, the vegetation was in the way!  She decided that I had had long enough to take a decent photograph and jumped quietly away out of sight.

Checking for Hazel flowers, something red caught my eye, not the female flower but a hibernating 7 Spot Ladybird tucked into a dead Hazel leaf.

In between this large mammal and small beetle came the Mallards.  There are around 40 of them on the lake. 

They were resting and preening on the ice and bathing in the shallow water covering the ice layer.  Most of the birds are paired and the females will soon move away from the lake to find suitable places to build a nest.  The males take no part in duckling raising.

A late addition to the blog.  Andrew photographed this Mallard dabbling!