Tlönista

Of all the cootlings on the pond at Regent’s Park, only one family’s is still a baby; the rest are downy grey-and-white juveniles like the one in the photo.

The oldest brood of red-crested pochard ducklings still have their fluff, but are almost as big as their parents.

The mallards’ ducklings have hatched! They’re just tiny zoomy bits of brown and canary-yellow fluff.

The greylag goslings must have been born some time ago, but are only being brought out onto the water now. Either that, or they’re just really big. They seem to be more of a lemon-yellow.

Of all the coot families there is one that is my particular favourite. Unusually, they have four cootlings — the other families on the pond only have one or two each. (Cursory interwebs research reveals that coots resort to splitting up feeding duties, picking favourites, and often outright infanticide to control brood numbers, especially when food’s scarce. I’ve noticed a couple of cootlings from various families vanish mysteriously between one lunchtime and the next.) Anyway, I usually sit opposite their nest and throw them bread from my sandwich. I have no idea how smart they are or how good their eyesight is, but it seems like they recognise or at least expect me — the parents now run boldly up to the bench and don’t flee when I chase away the geese who are always milling around. The coots will even take the bread right out of my hand.

Anyway, I saw a new feat of coot bravery this time: the parents actually biting Canadian and greylag geese to drive them away from the nest. A goose is two to three times as big as a coot (not counting the wingspan!) and, while birds of roughly the same size fight each other all the time over territory and food (coots have a special chest-bumping wing-puffing intense-diplomatic-talk ritual among each other), smaller birds virtually always defer to the larger. So this was a rare sight!

Yeah. It’s kind of like Meerkat Manor, but less anthropomorphic.

(You can see the rest of my Regent’s Park bird pictures on Flickr.)

So today I caught some well-deserved flak for forgetting to pass on an important phone message to one of my co-workers. Then a former client rang, angrily asserting that we had mislaid a terrible lot of his money, and the person dealing would have to be the same co-worker. And then the temp had a seizure.

The weekend can’t come soon enough.

Get up, check email and the weather, wash, haul myself into work clothes and haul ass to the train station to catch the 7:45. If I’m lucky, the northbound Northern line isn’t too crowded. Grab a cup of coffee while jotting down a journal entry, decompressing before the workday. Try to get a lot of stuff done and clear the file folders off my desk. Schlep down to my favourite café for “the usual”, jacket potato and a can of pop. Today: not the best, made some mistakes, stressed a lot and my shoulders ache. Get groceries on the way home. Throw together a typical dinner: pasta, with yogurt and fruit for dessert. By this time Jennie’s gone off to bed. Watch Spooks while petting the fat cat, who loves the attention. Run a hot bath for my shoulders. Feel bad about all the stuff that’s gone unblogged and emails unsent, but god damn it, it’s time to go to sleep again.