An intrepid gull during a feeding frenzy

I dropped Helena off at her work to save her having to walk there this morning as she still isn't feeling completely fit again. I took the opportunity to drive past Stratford Park fish pond, which s close to the entrance to a big supermarket car park. I saw a lot of birds flying and the heads of four swans, so I thought I would go and have a look.

I used the car park and walked across the road and stood by the fast flowing Painswick Book beside which the fish pond was created in the 19th century. There is a small weir on the river sheltered by overhanging trees, under which a lot of ducks had congregated and were being fed by some old people. There were a lot of gulls flying around, then landing on various fence posts before taking off in search of more food. About a dozen ducks were also milling about, mostly on the water being less manoeuvrable in the air than the gulls. Pigeons kept to the banks whilst two adult swans and their three cygnets swam about restlessly trying to catch up with the different people offering bread and seeds.

I walked around to the fish pond and managed to get close to the cygnets and got some good close-ups of their faces without any of them getting annoyed with me. But one woman arrived with particularly attractive food and the birds became very agitated with each other. My blip is of them all chasing the bread in the river a few yards above the weir. The noise was astonishing especially from the gulls who seemed to be the most aggressive towards all comers.

I have cropped the picture down so that only half the birds can be seen. But I wanted to show the gull which had flown straight down after spotting a piece of bread on the far side of the swan. It landed on the back of the swan and I was amazed that the swan didn't retaliate immediately, but I presume it was too busy with its own foraging to care. Earlier I had seen it was very agitated when a duck tried to come up close to nick a piece of bread, and it turned on the duck, but not without getting a nip from the duck in return.

But I was impressed with the calmness of the ducks on the whole. You can see here where they are just sitting back to wait for the gulls to go, so they can they pick up the plentiful remains. Somehow I think the ducks seemed the most at home in this watery situation.


You can see the action ore clearly if you press the 'L' key to enlarge the image