The best place for me to draw at Newmillerdam on this rainy morning is the Boathouse Cafe, sitting looking out of the 200-year old gothic mullioned window with a mug of latte.
Swallows swoop and glide low over the glowering grey surface of the lake. Thirty pink-footed geese – probably two or three families combined – progress sedately across the placid waters, making surprisingly little noise, considering how excitable geese can be.
There’s a family of coots with three youngsters, now almost adult size but in charcoal-and-white penguin-style livery, instead of the jet-black of the adults
On the coots’ nest by the outlet of the lake, an adult is sitting tight. This is a popular little nesting platform, now with it’s own mini-garden of herbage, and I think several families of coots must have been raised here over the last few months.
In the shallow film of water cascading over the top course of masonry of the outlet, mallards are dabbling. The lake has its backwaters, opaque and eau-de-nile today, but here there’s always a flow, so always the chance of some invertebrate or seed being washed down.
Two ducklings are swimming nearby. I’ve seen smaller ducklings stuck below the horse-shoe cataract of the outlet, unable to make the leap back up again, but these two seem just about old enough to escape the dangers.
