A jay screeches from up in the trees as I climb the steps to the Arboretum at Newmillerdam but woodland birds aren’t much in evidence as I walk briskly along, just the odd blue tit and great tit up in the branches and, more conspicuously, robins which are more on my level.
As a change from making a circuit of the lake, I’m heading up to the top end of the woods, towards the former railway cutting, where I haven’t been for years.
The original track between the drystone wall and the shelter belt of poplars gets steadily more overgrown with brambles as I walk along it before switching to the newer track alongside the Arboretum.
Reminding me of a scene from the Everglades, three cormorants, including a brown juvenile with a patch of white on its breast, sit on the twisting branches of a dead tree which rises from the shallows on a quieter stretch of the lake shore. A fourth cormorant splashes about near to them, going through a vigorous bathing routine.