Clear Off!!

This Greylag goose tried to look innocent while creeping up on one of the coot chicks. The parent coot was having none of it - it soon sent it packing, even though the goose was a lot bigger than the coot. Look at the horror on the face of the goose! (Best viewed large.)

The parent was probably super-annoyed as only a few minutes before it had chased the goose away for the first time (see extra) so this time it seemed even more aggressive. On that previous occasion the coot had been some distance away when it saw the goose approaching the chicks, and had really scooted across the water at a rate of knots to get to it to chase it off. If you look closely at the extra you can see the goose's pink left flipper out of the water as it hastens away.

We saw all this on our weekly walk to Killingworth Lake to see how the coot chicks were doing.We were delighted to see that 6 chicks are still surviving, and as you can see from the one in the main photo they're getting quite big now. So only one of the original 7 has been lost up to now, and that was very early. We think the parents must be very good at protecting them, although as the chicks now venture far and wide the parents have their work cut out now to keep the babies safe.

PS Just added another extra - I managed to capture a shot of a House Martin in flight (not easy - they're just a little quick!). The photo needed a lot of cropping and wasn't very wonderful so I decided to be arty and fartnarkle it. See what you think!