Birds-Eye View
In country areas people with light Aeroplanes photograph farms and other buildings every 5 years or so, and then months later try to find you from the pictures, and visit to try to sell you the pictures. Sometimes the price is hair raising, sometimes quite reasonable.
This one was taken in October 1996 from the South West. Of course we don't have any choice in time-of-day, angle etc.
The dark shadow of the house effectively conceals the major pond outside the kitchen window where the moorhen breed.
The top right pond is the 'duck pond' - look carefully to see why.
This one was taken in May 2006 as a view from the
North East. The Duck pond is at the top left and you can now see
the pond by the house. Round pond is just below left of centre and
nearly lost in the trees when viewed from the North.
The fruit trees in the original garden are in blossom. Black poplars (right edge and some leafless trunks lower centre) flowers early but make leaves very late.
What a difference 10 years makes!
This one was taken in Jan 2015. It seems that aircraft taking Aerial views is no longer economic, and satellite images are both marginal quality & copyrighted. So this one was taken from a DJI Phantom 1 drone with fixed GoPro Hero3 camera.
It shows another 9 years on, albeit without the lushness of a summer image but a lot of features less hidden. Photographed from our North boundary, the curves are the effect of the cameras very wide angle lens.
So we now have a fully fledged woodland - dark in the summer and all the trees producing their fruit & nuts. Not that the wildlife leave us any of the bounty except the Blackberries.
This one was taken 4 May 2015, that's 14 weeks after the winter
image above. Most of the trees are coming into leaf but not yet
completely obscuring the ground. The trees still showing white
branches are all Black Poplars which make large Catkins early, and
then do nothing more until mid-May.
This one was taken in 7 June 2015 from a similar northerly
position to that above, but now all of the trees are in leaf and
much of the ground detail and ponds are hidden by the leaf canopy.
This view taken a few minutes later from the south (i.e. looking
North) changes the perception of the ratio of meadow to woodland
in favour of the meadow. The bright road to the right is the new
concrete farm road dotted with Lombardy Poplars.
The brown lump at the very bottom is a collapsing Straw Rick left
for several years when the farmer couldn't sell it.
The main pond is green with duck weed just above the house.
The line of trees top right to middle left is along the line of
the local brook.
The bridleway with hedge saved from destruction with the help of
some of you a few years ago is the thin line running right from
the top of the concrete road into the distance. Although heavily
'managed' it is still a substantial feature when you walk the
bridleway, and the birds love it.
This view was taken on 25 Oct 2015 with Autumn (Fall in the USA)
well underway making a lovely patchwork quilt of colours.
There are lots more views available - if you want to build some
sort of sequence just tell us what you are looking for.