Rain and Muntjac

Since we've arrived in the UK, the weather has generally been quite good and we've gotten spoiled. That has now changed. It's been raining heavily, with intermittent sunshine, for two days and the forecast is for this to continue indefinitely. We might be spending a lot of time indoors reading until we leave for France in a week-and-a-half.

So--we spent most of the day inside looking out. Actually not a bad thing, with all the wildlife just outside our door.

In Victorian times, the gentry were fascinated by exotic wildlife and they imported many different types of animals from around the Empire. Some of it escaped from the zoos and still exists in the wild. One of our neighbors has reported seeing wallabies in the area.

A muntjac is a small deer, about the size of a medium sized dog, that originated in China. We have seen them several times but they are very shy and they bolt at the slightest movement. Today we finally got a photo. The neighbors consider them pests as they eat all the vegetation, including garden ornamentals.








The Red Kite was almost extinct in this part of England and it has been sucessfully reintroduced. They're a small raptor and are easily identified by their distinctive forked tail.