Swan Watch 2009

We hadn't been to feed the ducks for a while so we thought that we'd have a wander on over there today and see what's what. Heading for the bridge we usually stand on to throw food off (I like standing up there because they feel like my duck-minions) I expressed some concern, as only one of the black swans could be seen, and usually they're always together. The loner swan hurried over to us so we threw it some bread and I asked it where its other half was, but it didn't answer, because it's a swan. They can't talk.

I was really worried that a fox had made off with the other one, but Ben shook his head and said a swan would make short work of a fox, and just because they mate for life, it doesn't mean the other swan sometimes doesn't sometimes just enjoy time on his own; perhaps he was just off having a beer with his mates, they didn't need to be together ALL the time. I think there might have been some subtext there, so its probably a good job I'm going home for three weeks next Saturday.

I fed the poor lonely swan half the bread and we made our way round to the other side of the pond, just to see if the other one was hiding somewhere.

And it was - sat happily on six giant eggs, surrounded by bread crumbs, which we added to. We thought it was the lady swan at first, until the other one swam over to enquire exactly what we were doing quite so close to its next and we saw they were quite different in size.

(That is a freaky statue of what appears to be a drowned woman just to the bottom left of the picture. The Belgians truely are barking - "Alors, we've got this duck pond that will be popular with small children - we can either have a statue of a happy mermaid combing her hair, or we can have this statue of a naked dead woman with a crying child... shall we vote on it?")

The lady swan waddled up to the gentleman swan, who gave her a sort of 'it's about time you got back here' look; the effect of which was lost on her, probably because of the bread crumbs he had round his beak. After about half an hour of drying her tummy they decided to swap, and he began sorting out the nest, picking up bits of leaf from there and putting it over here, and tugging that bit of twig just so, for reasons he declined to let us in on.

Then some geese turned up and looked at us menacingly so we left. Not because of the geese, you understand; it was just a bit cold and we'd run out of bread. We definitely were not intimidated by birds. Ben did not say 'Amanda! Watch out - they're the mean ones!'.