Goose Chase

1.51 p.m.

Five pink-footed geese have touched down on the Middle Lake at Nostell Priory, but they’ve been spotted.

12 seconds later.

The cob mute swan of the lake’s resident family increases his speed as he draws nearer to them and the geese appear to be increasingly uneasy.

Another five seconds, and they’re taking off.

They soon decide that it’s time to make an exit and they take off heading down the lake, then double back to fly up the lake, heading off in the direction that they appeared from, only fifteen minutes earlier.

The goosanders (in the foreground in my last photograph) don’t get involved.

The cob mute swan has defending his territory uppermost in his mind. He spends a lot of time looking up at the small waterfall where the overflow channel beneath the bridge on the Doncaster Road flows through from the Upper Lake. There’s another family of swans on that lake and I’m sure they’d expand into our resident cob’s territory if they got the chance.

Meanwhile the four cygnets of the Middle Lake family are looking increasingly like adults, with fewer and fewer grey patches. I’m afraid that he will soon want them to move on, so that he and the pen can start raising their next brood.

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