Coming back from The Abbey, it was lunchtime, so we decided to stop for coffee and a pasty to people watch (so I’ve got out of cooking again today 🙂 ).
We got chatting to an elderly lady waiting for her friend, then when they departed we were joined by an elderly gentleman who thought Maggie was sweet as she stuck her nose in the cup for her latte fix.
He commented on the lovely weather and added he wished he was at home in his garden.
Apparently his wife had dragged him out and he was ‘taking a breather’ whilst they were browsing in one of the gift shops. He said he was married to a twin, and since his sister-in-law had been widowed, she came on every outing.
I asked if he’d had difficulty telling them apart in his courtship days as I remember my Dad telling me his identical twin sisters were forever playing jokes on their boyfriends.
He said he had, but knew he’d married the right one.
When the two ladies in question came to join him, we could tell they were twins, but there were significant differences now in their later years.
We parted company, and walked the rest of the way home.
It’s been such a glorious afternoon, we took the boat out and I got some pictures of ducklings, goslings, a heron (ugly brute) and an egret.
Sadly the little family of ducklings here in the marina has been reduced to one (the others lost to either pike, the heron or the huge gulls that have been common place lately), but it would appear that out on the river they stand a better chance of survival as we saw a family with 8 ducklings, one of which was yellow and forever going in the wrong direction to its siblings!
Hope you enjoy these pics, sorry they’re a bit fuzzy.
The above pictures are all one family. I saw one adult and a few babies, then another adult popped its head up, and suddenly the bank was full of fuzzballs!
These were on the water as we were going out.
This family was really spread out, but both parents were in attendance.
I don’t think this is the marina momma as we were too far out, but she only had one baby and there was no sign of Dad. When we got back to the marina and I walked the dog, I saw the female with her baby, and she has two males in attendance now.
And these little darlings we saw on the lock walk yesterday.
pensitivity101 
Lovely photos 🙂
thanks!
I’m sad to hear that the one mama is down to one duckling (I guess that’s nature, though). Perhaps she’ll have a later brood this summer and have better luck!
Nature is cruel sometimes, but we do have some pretty big predators in the marina. One of our Quartet (the white one) is sporting a foot injury and we are wondering whether he got his toes nibbled by something from the depths. He’s swimming OK, but on land he’s limping badly. His three mates (2 other drakes and a female) are always round him so he should be OK and adapt accordingly.
I would think he would adapt. I’ve seen plenty of birds with mangled feet who got by in life just fine. Sometimes I think I see more pigeons who have mangled feet than I see ones with regular feet!
We had a one footed canada goose in Poole Park we called Limpy Joe and he was amazing!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a one-footed Canada Goose (though I’m somewhat shocked that I haven’t – based on sheer numbers alone, you’d think I would have seen every iteration of those things!).