A quick visit to Rye Meads and wet visit to Audley

Not the best day for pictures.  Quite busy at Rye Meads in the morning in the sun, but at Audley this afternoon... not so good.

From the Kingfisher hide... the pair of Kingfishers are already prepared the next for brood 3 even though brood 2 are still due to fledge in about 2 weeks.

At one time, had a Kingfisher, juvenile Green Woodie and a Gt Spot Woodie all within my field of vision through the binoculars.

Male Kingfisher bringing fish to female on two or three occasions.  And at one time we had 3 Green woodies..

Not many pics today and those are poor quality!

Record pic of a juvenile Gt Spotted Woodie chasing the Kingfisher of its perch!

At Audley End in the afternoon.... we stayed for a bit but the rain.... rained so we called it day!

Then headed of to Thaxted for a cuppa at Poppy's tea-room which is quite a favourite place of ours :)

Wandering around London and the Pearl Fishers

Today we were off to see Bizet's The Pearl Fishers at the London Coliseum..  Apart from the well-known duet, it's not an opera I'm familiar with.

Firstly, the seats at the Coliseum are not that comfortable being very short from front to back, so it certainly helps to be absorbed in what you are watching.

However, today this was not to be.  Act 1 was OK but the duet was a little under-whelming.  We then had a short interval and on our return our neighbours were not there!

Acts 2 and 3, certainly livened up with some rather dramatic scenes.  The 'creating' of the sea was very clever as was the tempest out at sea.  Pearl Divers descended into the depths from above the stage and very realistically swam down to the bottom of the ocean.

The part of Leila was played by Sophie Bevan and her voice was beautiful.  However, I didn't feel that the male leads voices really filled the parts, for me anyway....

But before the Opera we strolled along the Thames.... a walk we've done several times before but there's always something different to see... .. and apologies to regular visitors if some of the views are somewhat familiar.

Pete looking for a book? never :D

And Yes, Pete passes the height test!

Using a film camera  :)