Swans

After a long weekend of eating barbeque and pirate invasions, today was a wonderfully calm and beautiful day.

We stopped by Lake Morton on the way out of Lakeland so I could get some bird pictures. I got some awesome pictures, but when it came down to picking just one, this one was my favorite.

The swans on Lake Morton are a lovely and famous part of Lakeland's history. Back in the 1950's, a Lakeland resident named Mrs. Robert Pickardt wrote to Queen Elizabeth of England and asked her to donate a pair of swans from a royal flock on the Thames River. The city raised the money needed to bring them to the US, and they thrived in Florida. Their descendants now live at Lake Morton and all the other lakes in the city.