Will it, won't it?

Was the weather going to make its mind up about whether to be misty or sunny today?

For the best part of the week, most of us had enjoyed stunningly beautiful mornings: great banks of white hawthorn-blossom, carillons of bluebells ...

The hour after dawn in April, looking towards Wallingford

Bluebells in Crowmarsh Parish Nature Area

And today, Green-Gym day?  Well, as we left our neatly-parked cars to trek to our upland worksite, the weather seemed to have come down on the side of misty:

That was the gentle part of the walk.  Once we had arrived at ‘HQ’, marvelled that we were now in cowslip and violet country, and sorted out tools, then came the trudge straight up the side of the slope to where we would actually be working:

“Have you got your oxygen?”

Spring was noticeably less advanced here than in the floor of the Thames valley.  Temperatures having remained cool for the first half of April, meant that we were able – with caution – to carry out a little more scrub clearance.  Blackbirds in particular tend to be quick off the mark nesting, apparently.  (If we had come across any live birds’ nest, we would simply have moved on to another area.)

The mist toyed with the notion of lifting.  Any serious reductions in visibility now were on account of the fire.  Which may have been getting quite warm, judging by what appeared – from one photographer’s PoV – to be some quite balletic moves on the part of volunteers to get out of the way:

Tea break entailed walking back down the slope again.  In some cases, for a well-earned sit-down as well as a cuppa:

Then back up the slope for ‘more of the same’ as in the first half.  Except that this was enlivened by the spectacle of some low-flying Red Kites; meeting, and gently re-locating, a frog (or toad); and discovering an old nest (wren, long-tailed tit?) ...

“That should keep the Red Kites away!”

Just as we were packing up to leave, mist turned very briefly to sunshine, then squeezed out the fewest tiniest drops of rain imaginable.