Little Little Preening

More beady (both droplets and eyes) in large ("L").

Yay, I'm whole again! I collected my camera first thing, and after a very apprehensive photo session, can (with great relief declare) that it is back to normal! PHEW.*
I visited the Goosles straight afterwards, and all was fairly quiet on the pond... I went for coffee and then came back to find the pond much more animated: Mr. chased LL, Little G. chased LL, moorhens chased moorhens, and coots chased everyone... The Goosles took themselves to the island and Little Little remained on the edge of the pond. When Little Little slid into the water, Little G. took offence and flew straight over to chase LL out of the pond and away.
It didn't last long and Little Little returned and had an epic preening session in the water with loads of feather straightening and massive bursts of splashing.

I found choosing my blip very difficult: there was Mr. with his feathers blown up by the wind, Mrs. jumping into the water and creating a wonderful rippling splash (like a Chihuly glass sculpture), a dragonfly (both on the ground and in flight), and Little G. in flight (whizzing over to chase LL).
I've uploaded them all (including a 16 shot sequence of the preening: my blip assistant said that the series was probably more interesting than the individual shots) to my first Flickr set.

*I must mention that Fixation were brilliant: it was wonderful of them to hear my plea and to respond by fixing it so quickly (it only took one day for the estimate, and another to repair).

p.s. Look who it was last year -------------------------------------------->