Kings of the Tame Frontier

animals, Birds, Britain, British Isles, Canal, conservation, England, environment, natural history, natural world, nature, Photography, Wildlife, Wildlife photography

A European kingfisher appears to be tobogganing down a boat’s mooring rope.

Kingfisher sliding down the mooring rope
Self-same kingfisher yawning? Yelling? Exercising that impressive beak of his?
He has a noble forbearance against the miserable elements.
He strikes a classic pose
A great, grey heron preens the parts that others bills cannot reach
Self-same heron sits menacingly on a branch, watching for glinting shapes under the water’s surface.

All photos the property of SM Shanley ©Trespasserine2020

These Lifeless Things

desert, Dubai, Landscape Photography, Landscapes, People, Photography, Travel, Travel Photography

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I met a traveller from an antique landdsc_0760

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
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Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commanddsc_0627

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.dsc_0642

Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(P.B. Shelley, Ozymandias, 1818)