Fauna Friday: Whose home?

I always HATE returning to work after Christmas. In more ways than one it was far worse this year and a little incident just took the biscuit. It was blowing a severe gale on 3rd January and it was my first day of returning to getting up in the dark and going out to feed the ponies. I cut open a new hay bale and put most of it ie about 7 eighths on my trolley. It just won't hold a whole bale. Off I sent up the hill, the wind buffeting me and sucking away my breath. I got to the top, turned in the gate and prepared to go down the slope between the cleft on my left and the open mineshaft on my right. The gale was battering me from the right so I walked sideways, barely able to stand up. Then all of a sudden I saw my hay list to the left and I reached out to press it onto the trolley, but too late. The whole lot went off into the air and down in the cleft. You can still see a bit of it there now, in May.


 There was no hope of gathering it up as it was just swirling around in the cleft. £5.00 down the drain in one go. The poor ponies watched from the gate - their breakfast gone with the wind. I could do nothing else but walk back and repeat the exercise but hubby came with me and held it on that time. Not a good start to the working year.

I do intend going back to rake it up, and I will, because that bit of land isn't ours, but it's not used much. Over the months though I have noticed that something has been moving in and out of the biggest clump of hay and I've been down to investigate. Something must live under the lump of rock and it has been pushing through the hay to get to and from its door. I wonder what it is. It would be great to have one of those outdoor wildlife cameras that click on when something moves in front of them. What fun I could have and what great things I could find out if I had one of those!