Ducklings!

I have finally finished my masters here in Cambridge. My exams went fine and in about another week I'll visit a friend in Ghana for three weeks. After exams I rowed in May bumps, had a short trip to Belgium, and went to a May ball, which was all a lot of fun, and I'll probably post photos pretty soon.

But until then, I thought I would post a few photos of some of the ducklings we've had in the pond out front of Churchill College. One of the nice things about being near the river Cam is seeing all the baby birds. On the other hand, there is a swan that's been very aggressively defending (as in, it thinks that best defense is a good offense) its mate and nest that lives in the part of the Cam where people row. It puffs up its wings and swims menacingly at pacing eights, and it went after someone in a scull and made them flip. One of my friends went out sculling around that time and the swan grabbed one of his blades in its beak; fortunately he was able to get away. Several articles about the swan, which got named "Mr. Asbo" were written, including the following: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5119527/Mr-Asbo-the-swan-attacks-unsuspecting-rowers.html

"ASBO" stands for "anti-social behavior order," which is given to people in Britain by police for disruptive behavior.

So, here are the ducklings outside Churchill when they were quite young, in all their fluffy glory:

For a sense of scale, here's one of them next to its mom (sorry, its mum, it's an English duckling) and dad.

Here are some of them all cuddled up together, after they've gotten a bit bigger:

At this point, I still see the ducklings around sometimes, and I would say that they're roughly at the teenager point of development. They have some adult feathers now, and they're getting pretty close to their parents in size.