A Horse, Three Gates & Two Carrots
There are plenty of horses in Friesland but this particular Frisian horse always gets my attention, I always stop and say hi and scratch his shoulders for a bit and marvel at his beauty and sheer power….
He usually is standing by the gate in the lower field where the light and open space don’t really work for me…after several photo sessions without the desired result I realised I needed to interfere…
At the top of the field is an open gate to another field with also has another gate on the sandlane amongst some trees and the light which I needed…he has both fields all to himself…all year…of course, I wonder why…
One day I chopped up a couple of large carrots….I got his attention and got him to follow me around the side of the field but he got distracted by some grass… 😕
After cycling around the corner and down the lane to the gate in the other field, I hopped over the gate and through the dividing gate and called him while waving a carrot about…at first he pretended to ignore me…then after a quick glance, started galloping over so I swiftly hopped back over the gate and grabbed my camera… 😉
When the carrots were eaten he started to bite other stuff like the gate and tried to give me the occasional sneaky nip too…that head and neck are huge…a simple turn of the head from his view is like a major manoeuvre for a mere human…he will sometimes kick the gate with his front hooves, not hard but he got one of his hooves a bit stuck at one point…all a far cry from the recent butterfly photography! As much as I love this magnificent creature, I must admit that I’m glad of the gate that divides us….for now… 😉
A Brief Moment in Time
The shot was all lined up…the young horses were nicely arranged…the crow perched in profile in an already idyllic setting….suddenly to my left I heard the calls of oystercatchers on the wing…
Equine Equanimity
In the northern hemisphere we move slowly but surely from summer to autumn, the migrating birds depart for warmer climates and in turn birds from the north will start to arrive.
My own habits change too, the dawn seems empty without the avian serenade we have become accustomed too in spring and summer.
On this particular late summer, misty morning I decided to check out some different routes as I aimlessly wandered…horses and ponies caught my eye as they greeted the new day playfully in the cool dampness of the dawn mist.
a heartical view 