Big Pond Community

Visited the Swan family this afternoon (twice) as I needed a break from the computer at work. The Big Pond Community was interesting. The first visit Mr and Mrs Swan were taking the cygnets for a clover chomping walk. They tolerated us standing nearby but then became bored with us. The cygnets look decidedly scruffy and rather clumsy and - as my colleague pointed out - rather raptor/dinosaur like. The cygnets were having squeaky/whistling conversations with each other. On the pond the coots were out and about with the three bald red headed fluffy babies (cute but ugly). The parents were feeding the babies and generally keeping them out of danger.
Very relaxing watching the BPC.

Second visit at the end of the day - Mr and Mrs Swan were in the pond with cygs. and tolerated both coots and ducks with the occasional brief skirmishes. The duck with her 10 ducklings walked over to the pond and her ducklings were surprisingly fast even grabbing bread crumbs from under the cygnets beaks. One of the other ducks pecked at one of the ducklings and immediately regretted it as the mother duck launched into attack mode and then gathered up her brood. Following this the duck only had 8 ducklings with her as two had fled to the reeds. She called for them - tone getting louder and louder - sent the 8 to the other side of the pond into the reeds - and came back to search - braving an aggressive coot, the swans and cygs. My stress levels at this point were high as she didn't seem to understand my directions as I told her where to look. She eventually found the 2 ducklings and shooed them across the pond.
Time to go home.