the swan

lately birds have been in my life in a weird way. a week ago when i was hanging out with charles, this crazy eagle took two seperate swoops at a seagull for dinner despite two crows trying to take the eagle out and a hundred seagulls voicing their opinion on the demise of their unfortunate brother. this happened no less than 10 feet away from where i was standing. i left my camera in the car that day because i figured i had seen everything at clover point. argh.
here is charles’ description of the epic crow-seagull-eagle thriller, lifted from his livejournal:
I went out for a drive with davin tonight and we ended up down at clover pt. beefore hitting up alzu’s. (where we actually met alzu btw) So when we get down there, a few people are chillin some kites up in the sky, and we clamber down the rocks where i proceed to smash flotsam on jetsam. and we walk around to the main point and check out some green [bleep] and all of a sudden about 20 seagulls are screaming like crazy, making absurdly loud comments about each other’s mothers and davin and I are like wtf? Then all of a sudden this crazy [censored] eagle swoops down with a seagull in it’s grip. We go “WOOOAAAAHHHHH!” “that seagull is fucked!” It was crazy windy out and this retarded seagull is trying to flap away, so the eagle lands on some rocks, then some crazy mother[censored] crows start dive bombing him, and he’s like “piss off!” then he takes off, with the gull in his grip, and drops in the water, so he’s like “fuck, that’s dinner!” and does two fly-bys to pick him back up to fly off to into the distance with all these assholes chasing him (assholes being other seagulls).
hehehe! charles kicks ass.
but i digress.
last week i went on a walk at lunch time and discovered a swans nest and two swans to go with it. the nest had several huge swan eggs in it and the swans just poked around while i enjoyed a sunny day. so, i made friends with the swans that day last week. i didn’t have my camera with me, again.
today i came back to the place and stood on the hill, this time with my camera. i looked down and saw the female sitting on the eggs while the male sat on a bunch of dirt on the dirty beach. they both looked rather content with what they were doing:

take a look at the beer bottle beside the swan in the first picture there. that should give you an idea of just how big these birds are. they are huuuuuge. that neck is about 2 to 2.5 feet long.
i walked down the hill (very small, 15 feet high) and the male got up and walked towards me to say hello. after a while he got bored with my idle conversation and started doing swan stuff:


so i walked over to see the other swan. she was sitting in the nest and making faces at me, turning her head back and forth, watching me while i fiddled with my camera and explored the dirty beach. i took pictures of the grass and dirt, and some old radio (or something) that someone had thrown onto the beach years before. though i wont reveal on here (for the swans’ protection) where exactly it is in victoria that this is, i can say that it’s one of the most dreadful misappropriation of land and waterfront that victoria has to offer.




if you want any of these as desktop wallpapers, leave me a comment. they are sooooooo much more spectacular at full 5 megapixel resolution. 🙂