Hearing the familiar with fresh ears.

It was nearly nine by the time I got up this morning, recovering from such a full day yesterday. The fitbit sleep tracker reckoned I slept only half of those hours, though I certainly wasn't tossing and turning all night. But then I don't rate very highly the smartness of smartwatches anyway. I did the house cleaning in fits and starts during the morning while Clare cooked a delicious chickpea curry.

I went out to inspect the moorhen's next in Thompson's Park, and found it empty,. The photos taken on the HX90 and phone camera showed what I think may be fragments of an eggshell. No sign of dead chicks or smashed eggs, but predatory gulls would make short work of them. In pond reed bed, sat a solitary bird on what, from the full length of the lens looked like a new nest. In a corner of the frame depicting the next, a black out of focus smudge which could be a chick, or not. 

I went home and collected my Sony HX300 and returned to see if I could get photos of the nest from an angle above and across the pond with a longer lens again. These confirmed a complete new nest made of reeds had been built in the reed bed. The bird that had been standing on a submerged twig when I arrived had moved into the nest. Only its back was visible. Is it sitting on a new clutch of eggs? Or a surviving chick transported from the ornamental pond to the wilder safer reed bed? 

For much of the last week only one moorhen seems to have been active in support of the other. Did one get predated or flee the scene, or been quietly busy preparing a second nest in the reed bed? It's a tantalising mystery, one which leads to conversations with other interested park visitors. Nature doesn't always give up its secrets easily. Maybe we'll find out what's going on eventually.

The bonus, however was a shot in evening light of a reed warbler under a bush on the edge of the water, a bird I've often heard, but pretty elusive in closeup.

When I got back, second time around, I emailed the best photo's I'd taken to Jasmine, and was delighted to have a response from here several hours later. She's off to Geneva tomorrow to start the road trip to the Cote d'Azur, via Turin. crazy distances in their time frame. 

I went for a brisk circuit of Llandaff Fields, to complete my daily walking distance before supper. My right ankle had been complaining slightly, and what I've learned is that I can remedy this by stretching my upper right quad with strides or knee bends, It seems to stabilise the ankle joint, though I'm not sure how.

I listened to some Miles Davis quintet early sixties tracks, from the Verve albums stored on my phone. As Clare wanted to watch Elton John's performance at the climax of this year's Glastonbury festival on BBC iPlayer, I went upstairs and sat on my bed instead. These tracks contain special memories of my sixth form years when I listened to Jazz more than pop music, thanks to my sister June and Penry my scoutmaster. It's amazing to discover that after sixty years my memory of the tracks and the solos within them are intact. When I listen to them now, they are fresher than when I first heard them, as I notice emotional expression within musical phrases, which I wouldn't have noticed nearly as much as a late teenager. It's like returning from a spell in Spain and noticing how fresh and colourful streets taken for granted at home can be.