Taking Myself...

Taking myself  on little jaunt to Northam, a small town in the Avon Valley region, which is a quiet 45 kilometres drive east from where I live.

The sole reason for the visit was to see the small colony of mute swans here.

As I arrived I was greeted by a pair of spoonbills, before noticing black swans with cygnets, closely followed by a pair of white swans gliding on the river. 

White swans are much larger than our native black swans. They also have an elegance that no other water birds possess.

I have truly missed seeing white swans on a regular basis.

Thankfully I saw the two on the river before coming across four others later in a small fenced enclosure. One looked particularly unwell which was distressing.

Other than the swans there was plenty of action on the Avon River, from geese and a variety of ducks to extremely rowdy seagulls. 

The seagulls are over a hundred kilometres away from the ocean which was interesting in itself.

 But they were also nesting, which really did surprise me.

 Doing a bit of research I discovered that seagulls are moving inland after being pushed out of habitat by urbanisation. 

They are quite fierce in defending their nests, I wasn't able to see any eggs or gull chicks from my vantage point.

  

On my walk over to the swan enclosure I stopped to appreciate several pieces of art along the way.

The swans were joined by a colourful group of other birds, including a straw necked ibis surrounded by many ducks.

I am glad I saw the swan with angel wings at the very end of my visit here. Angel wings is a deformity caused by dietary issues or development problems. This leads to flight problems which could mean they can't evade predators, or migrate. 

I also wondered if the four in the enclosure had had their wings clipped. 

It seemed bizarre that the river was right next to this small compound and they chose that over the freedom of the river...