University Parks: Autumn Cygnet

More impressive a span in large.

Yay, I found one of the cygnets with one of its parents; it was definitely the smaller (friendly) cygnet. It was lovely to see them, and they looked particularly pretty amongst the autumn leaves and their reflections.
They got out of the river and waddled over to the pond before pottering around there for a bit; when the parent flapped out of the pond, the cygnet got stuck (it couldn't flap out) and it paddled up and down getting more and more distressed (especially when it lost sight of its parent). It eventually got out and calmed right down as soon as it reached the river and its parent.

I also enjoyed photographing the black-headed gulls on the pond, especially when some people fed them and they started squabbling... There was a Canada goose family there too (mostly preening), and I managed to sneak very close to some of the young geese with the macro mounted...

I've uploaded quite a few others to Flickr: the swanny pics are right from here, and the others are right from here. There are a couple of extras as "teasers".