As spring is in the air the canals are full of baby ducks, geese and swans. You can see why the ugly duckling story came about, compared to the cute, fluffy ducklings, swans are large, grey and boring, but they are a lot more intelligent!
The swans have learnt that the boats mean food, and really brave ones will even come and tap on the side of the boat to ask for bread. The other morning a family of swans came round at breakfast, just before we set off for the day and some toast was between the boat and shore. Now the swans might be intelligent enough to know the boats mean food, but they are not very safety conscious. Mummy and Daddy escorted all ten cygnets between the boats and into the gap towards the bread. They were hissing and spitting at us as we tried to shoo them out and once the cygnets got wind of the bread there was no stopping them. Lauren distracted Mum and Dad with some more bread while I leant into the canal and removed as much toast as I could so the cygnets would have no reason to stick around. Luckily, no other boats came past while they were between the boats and shore as the wash would move the boats and squash the swans.
Then it was time to go and the swans escorted us out of their territory. Once the motor was running the safety element seemed to kick in with the adults and they were herding the little ones away from the boats if they got too close. Imagine having 10 babies to look after on a canal, even if they can all swim, I wouldn’t fancy it.
Now ducks, they are a whole different story.
When the boats come along they panic and start swimming like crazy. Quite often Mummy duck ends up on the opposite side of the boat to her ducklings. She will quack like crazy and the ducklings “Beep Beep Beep” back to her and they try to race the boat to get back together. Eventually we will overtake them and as they catch sight of each other, they all hurtle together and Mother duck circles round them, herding them together until she is happy they are all there and relaxes again as we disappear into the distance.
And geese, well geese are just nasty. The less said about them the better.
