Goose down

During volunteering, I was trying to persuade my peers that swans have a particular dislike for greylag geese. No, no, I was told, they dislike Canada geese too. I went on, recounting my experiences, only to be trumped by evidence that swans had killed Canada goose goslings at the park in town.

These guys were well away from the swans.

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Now, of, course, it's uncomfortable to think of lovely swans killing geese. I know that some of my colleagues would argue that the only reason there is interspecies violence is because the birds are confined into habitats too small but human encroachments all over the place and because they are stressed by the proximity of people. now that could perhaps also be applied to the causes of human violence - stress and effective overcrowding.

It's also plausible that waterbirds could find themselves more densely situated than they would like after periods of low predation, for whatever reason. I mean, I understand that natural processes of population growth, predation, disease, starvation and so on do not function permanently at some ideal optimal balance but on waves.

Look, I'm not trying to redeem the murdering swans––nor, perish the thought, the ills of humanity. It's just than black and white thinking always annoys me.

And the swans prove it––they don't love Canadas and hate greylags. Like everything, it depends.

This is a willow who was left for dead, but it proving that, yes, they are resilient buggers.

And here, feathers in the algae... I know... not really that attractive. Goodness knows what I was thinking.

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