These three looked like they were having an amiable little chat while nibbling on the foliage that is exposed on the weir in the centre of town. Why shouldn’t they get together for lunch? Like humans, Canada geese seem a sociable enough species — at least, with each other. (World Cup reference: Go Canada!)
The goose certainly gives the impression of being rather annoyed with the mallard: who, in turn, seems to be making a conscious effort to get out of the way of its bigger cousin. Not an easy one to get right thanks to all the sparkles on the Hebden Water — as a result it’s overlit — but it just about works.
This being the first Saturday since 7th February (when I was working in Dubai) that I did not have a football match to go to, I needed other entertainments. Not that I joined in with whatever these two were up to. My lifetime’s participation in the sport of angling (if sport it is) lasted about two hours, when I was about fourteen years old. I’ve spent more time potholing, in fact (about three hours in 1991): which also involved wading around in undesirably cold water for most of the time.
To me it looks like the goose is paddling through paint, a Jackson Pollock-style approach to imposing its artistic views on the world, or at least, this part of the Hebden Water, below the line of shops and apartments on Valley Road. Maybe the bird itself could be a bit more prominent — although its not as if Canada geese are bright red, is it — or I might have zoomed in more, but never mind.
I cnanot think of anything deep to say about this one, except that it represents a day spent at home not doing much. This is a variable time of year; in mid-April in some other years I have been in Ljubljana, Melbourne and Windhoek, but this year all the spring travelling is already done.
This is, pretty much, the attitude I affected for most of the day. The weather was grim, and if it counted as ‘nice weather for ducks’, well, he’s doing his best to ignore it.
I don’t think the police will be called for this one, although somewhere there may well be a small person distraught over the loss of their soulmate and demanding major investigations. To those who want to know, then, this morning it was in the Hebden Water, just upstream from the weir by the White Lion. If retrieved and given some tumble dryer attention there might even be a reunion.
Photographically, today was definitely a ‘give thanks to the heron’ day. Had I left the house 30 seconds earlier, you might well have seen the reason for its somewhat smug look, seeing as it has just guzzled a fish almost as long as its throat: I did get a shot of the kill but it was on such a long zoom (and in the same gloomy light as all other shots in the last few days) that the quality is very poor. Take my word for it, though: this is a heron that dined well this afternoon.
“OK, are you ready? I want you to get my best side…. THAT’S the one. Send me a copy….”
It’s a shame about the foliage but these are near-perfect ripples, and the impression I got was very much that the goose was just sitting there and making them simply because it could. A human equivalent might be holding a ruler down on a desk and making it go bdrrbbrrrddbrrdd. A pointless but pleasing application of physics.
Being 42 