Oystercatchers On Ice

So …
En route to Southwold for yesterday's cockle-fuelled innuendo-fest (thank you, ladies), we parked up near Blythburgh marshes and Old Dive crept, Elmer Fudd-like through the frost-hoared pinewoods to stalk Blythburgh Church (almost falling down a badger sett on the way … those stripey-nosed bastards seem to make a habit of digging bloody great holes in the ground and hiding them in undergrowth).


As you can see by the still frozen waters of the marsh it was fucking cold at that hour of the morning.
That's the beautiful, late gothic church of All Saints, Blythburgh in the distance behind the drowned stumps of pine trees and the avocet flying across the middle of the photo (don't argue; I've got the hi-res original and can see it's a bloody avocet. This marsh is where most of the blighters over-winter).
We'll be visiting the church in some detail later in the week, which is actually a lot more of a thrill than it sounds, because Satan appears, together with a dancing bear with a big cock, plus a man with a chamberpot on his head and a spectacular codpiece, but you'll have to wait for that.

In the meantime I am still trudging across a frozen marsh.
Oh, looky! A pair of oystercatchers keeping their feet off the ice.
What do you mean you didn't know you were signing up for a birdwatching course?

Another shot of old stumpy, just for the hell of it.

Here's the church later in the day, when the sun had burned off the ice and I was full of cockles.
I love these sunny Sundays; they give me enough photos to spin out a travelogue all week without having to think of anything to write about.
Hee hee.