Horton Country Park

Being at Hobbledown (see reference 1) reminded us that we had not been to Horton County Park for a while. So to make up we went two days running, doing the short walk on each occasion.

A warm, sunny day. But this did not stop the runners, of whom there seemed to be quite a lot. Some quite old, some quite fast.

The hedges seemed to have grown quite a bit since we were last there, in my case in the days when the park was an occasional extra tacked onto the Horton Clockwise, a walk I stopped doing, for no particular reason, a few years ago now, in favour of the Ewell Village walk, usually anti-clockwise. Some signs of elm hedge trees still trying, despite being regularly knocked back by Dutch Elm Disease.

A pleasant sit by the pond. A bit down but well supplied with dragonflies and damselflies.

One of the untended fields, looking well

Some polo action in the field attached to the equestrian centre. Some groupies, mainly girls, minding the spare ponies.

Some very tame swallows in the yard - tame in the sense that they did not fly off on my approach. Rather small and scruffy looking, but looking at their faces from the front, I was surprised how wide their mouths were. One supposes, all the better to catch flies with.

Plenty of grasshoppers in and around this patch

About two centimetres long in life

More

More zoom

More luck with grasshoppers on day two, finding a patch of grass with lots of them. I suspect that modern cameras are useful to naturalists, but I expect a downside will be that naturalists are all to apt to take pictures rather than to look, as they would have had to in the days when one drew one's find. Rather as statisticians are apt to stop looking at the numbers when they have got a computer to feed them through.

Field

One of the camels

Field

The nilgais

A bonus was a peep through the fence at the Hobbledown camel field. And next to them were some large fat deer, sitting in a line by the hedge. Pale brown in colour, some of them at least sporting short horns. So not llamas as we had first thought. Back home, turned the pages of Burton (reference 4), thought about nilgais, but decided against on the grounds that the males, according to Wikipedia (reference 3), were not brown but blue. However, this afternoon, I phone them up and a helpful young lady tells me that they were indeed nilgais. She seemed quite amused that I wanted to know.

Back to the polo area, where we were treated to a young man showing us the proper way to get off a polo pony: swing leg over and jump - none of this messing about with stirrups and lowering oneself down in the dignified manner of my day.

On the way out, a polo player of a certain age arriving in his MG, a sporty car favoured by smart young people when I was young. Accompanied by a blonde of uncertain age. Plus what looked like a proper Globetrotter suitcase strapped on the back, made before it became a luxury item sold in appropriate shops in Mayfair. A journey also made by the Belstaff people, once purveyors of outer clothing for serious biker boys. See reference 6.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/hobbledown.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/01/short-back-and-sides.html. Clearly still doing the Horton Clockwise often enough in January last year as there is no mention here of coming back to it. Perhaps the change over was more gradual than I now recall.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilgai.

Reference 4: Systematic dictionary of the mammals of the world - Maurice Burton - 1962.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/11/dalhousie.html. Where this Burton came from. And who has been both useful and entertaining over the years. Earning several notices.

Reference 6: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2016/02/bells-of-bond-street.html.