It is perhaps your considerable misfortune that I consider the cuteness of baby waterfowl to culminate in cygnets, and took a couple hundred cygnet pictures.
The zoo has an observation post by the side of the pond, and that includes a sloping concrete apron into the water where food gets put out. This makes it remarkably easy to get cygnet pictures, if mostly straight down.
This is a coming-in-for-lunch shot with the 800mm Rokinon. The rest are nigh-vertical from the observation platform using the DA 55-300.
It's a foodstuff!
If the cygnet and the cygnet's shadow do not touch, the cygnet must be floating.
As one might judge by the ripples, when cygnets lunge for something, they do it emphatically. I would judge that these guys are still young enough to be eating diverse arthropods and crustaceans, and maybe tadpoles, but I wasn't able to discern just what they were eating from the water.
08 June 2009
Cygnets
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4 comments:
Excuse me while I squeal like a little girl at the Cute.
...what was Hans Christian Andersen thinking? Ugly Duckling? Not on your life.
Flooffy!
I want one! And I want a pond for it to swim in, and I want it never to grow into a big, scary, regal-looking swan that will scare the cats.
Of course, I'd have to find a way to keep Marinetti from eating it, but I still want one!
Mute swan cygnets are a bit less ploofly and a bit more gangly, but I think one still must suppose that M. Andersen was viewing the matter strictly from the perspective of the ducks. (They'd have to be really dim ducks. Pretty much all other waterfowl are terrified of swans.)
The trick with swans (and domestic geese) is to be the thing it imprints on when it hatches. That way, it can scare the cats away from the damp verge (which isn't going to take that much doing) but it will try to stuff itself under your knees if you sit down and generally be amenable to your presence.
it will try to stuff itself under your knees if you sit down and generally be amenable to your presence.
Of course, what I really need is another animal trying to stuff its body under mine whenever I sit down. Because Marinetti's headbutts of luuurve and Luna's ongoing battle with my computer over my lap aren't enough to navigate.
I think I shall content myself with pictures of adorable fluffiness, really, even if I would die from the cute of my very own perma-cygnet.
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