McGresty

It was one of those typical English days when everything runs right, 55 degrees and overcast. A short train ride and I am walking around a nature park with the intention of photographing some water fowl. Normally, unless it is something special, I give this lot a miss but today the 'lings were out. Geese, plus other birds, are getting their latest offspring out on the water of the lake and I like to see them all.

The usual ground cover here normally has a little bit of Cow Parsley, but with a super dry February followed by record rainfall in March and then the April showers, it's quite a sight. The entire park (acre after acre) is covered with this stuff, something of this magnitude has not happened here before. On some of the trails the parsley is nearly 7 feet high and it's as though I am in a totally different place.

Last week these two geese had 5 goslings, now only 3 are left. The predators have eaten 2, one is a very large carp which I have seen take an entire sea gull in it's mouth then submerge to finish off the thing and that was 3 years ago—it's still in the lake.

There is an island in the middle of the lake where many birds have their nests. The last few weeks the male swan has been protecting the eggs by doing some serious damage to any of floating feathered lot which approach the swans side. This day, the female was out and giving her swanlings (cygnets really) their first taste of floating about on the water. I wonder how many will survive.