Alphas

We were happy to get up this morning and find that Storm Isha had passed on during the night without doing any obvious damage in our village, and I hope that all blipfriends have come through it equally unscathed. Some of the photos here are quite scary.

Despite the post-storm relief, I had a pretty annoying and frustrating morning for various reasons, and this afternoon my irritation drove me out of the house and back over to Stratford. I was sorry, though not wholly surprised, to see that the remaining Tufted Ducks have now gone. For obvious reasons they tend to use following winds to help propel them homewards, but personally I think I'd have sat out a storm like last night's, and waited for something a little gentler. 

The Mute Swans on the river are preparing to enter their breeding season, and some of them were getting in a bit of a tizz. This pair of cobs, wings flared in the threatening posture known as "busking", weren't interested in each other, but were both on the lookout for beta males with whom to have words, and in the space of a few minutes they chased two down the river, and drove a third right out of the water and into the relative safety of the park. For these lesser males I fear it may be a long and trying few weeks.