These past few weeks, I have noticed a huge flock of golden plovers – or congregation.

They land in my field and then erupt into the sky with a massive flapping (sounds like whirring) of wings, swooping over me.

It is an awesome sight.

There are hundreds of golden plovers and I stand watching them (praying they don’t poop on me!) while they decide on their next place to land.

It can take a few minutes while they all fly in formation suddenly turning as one and changing colour as their pale under-carriage and wings are now on show.  Most amazing.

These are European Golden Plovers – Pluvialis apricaria.

Meanwhile, back on earth, a certain horse is in my bad books.  Haakon and his friends are on a diet, for obvious reasons, but they are not happy about it while the weather is vile.

As it is about to turn again, I caved, opened the gate and shouted.  No one was asked twice.  There was a thunder of hooves, some squealing/bucking and then they all quickly settled down.

Taktur was very pleased to see the adults.

He gets very bored of Minion sitting.

Then Lambie and Lambert started to complain about having to be proper sheep living in a field. Yes, I let them out only to find them pressed up against the front door, trying to get in.

They have their own bedroom and they can go in there during the storm.  Lambie’s beautiful eyes are not going to sway me.

No, no, no!  (He does have the loveliest eyes, though!)