Rain Dancing

 I was pleased to see that the ponies had been out and about in the reserve before I got there today.

Photo credit: Tom (Assistant Reserves Manager)

When I arrived they had retreated to their favourite corner again which at least made them easy to find. 

My friend Vanessa had kindly come with me and was the grand holder of the headcollar until we found the ponies (I did some litter-picking). 

I brought them all over to the pound, via the water trough where they kissed the cows, and covered them in assorted fly creams. Hopefully we won't need these products much longer. 

This cow is not very good at hide and seek. 

Vanessa is a Looker for Hampshire Council, keeping an eye on the six Exmoor ponies at another interesting site. It's much lumpier than the reserve that mine are on but about the same size. 

We found two of the ponies - two older Anchor herd Exmoors; the youngsters were hiding somewhere else.  They too were struggling with the flies and lots of crab flies. Happily mine seem to have got rid of theirs with the application of long acting fly cream but that does rely on them being touchable. 

We should be grateful to all conservation ponies, turning back time on those areas where woodland has been allowed to get out of hand or where there are areas which cannot be managed at all with machinery. 

I may have met Anchor 434 before when I was involved with the Moorland Mousie Trust. I can clearly an Anchor 433 pony bottom in this picture which is just one before this one...