Black Swan Event (Friday 5th February 2021)

Having been under virtual house arrest seemingly forever, when I finally got out of Calne for the first time since autumn last year, it was an impossibility that could be described as a 'Black Swan Event'*, and one in which I saw a black swan.

I had to go to Swindon for my first AstraZeneca vaccination, and had driven directly from a routine blood test I'd had at the local surgery, so reached Swindon with hours to spare.

I filled the time by parking at Coate Water Park, five minutes away, and spent a happy couple of hours strolling around the perimeter of the main lake, taking pictures. Among the dozens of swans and cygnets was this black swan, and I also saw a female goosander, black-headed gulls, a cormorant, tufted ducks, Canada geese, blue tits and great tits, magpies, coots and moorhens. It was raining a little, as you can see in this jackdaw shot. It seemed far too long. There was an old oak known as The Council Oak with a plaque commemorating the Coate-born author Richard Jefferies who described the oak in his book Bevis, The Story Of A Boy. A bonus was the take-away café that provided a mug of chips to eat in the car after the walk.

I hope to return there when I have my second jab at the end of April, when I might see their great white egret again and maybe little egrets and herons, known to be there.

I was able to return via Marlborough and a walk through the Waterfront Gardens by the River Kennet for a Waitrose shop, normally too far away to be classed as local, and spend an £8 voucher there.

L.
7.2.2021 (1740 hr)

Blip #3361 (#3111 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #002
Blips/Extras In 2021 #018/265 + #008/100 Extras
Day #3968 (862 gaps from 26.3.2010)
LOTD #2504 (#2345 + 159 in archived blips)

Swan series
Birds series
Diary Blip series

Taken with Pentax K-5 and Sigma AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG Macro lens

Coate Water Park, 5 February 2021 (Flickr album of 66 photos)
(wide-angle shots taken with Pentax KS-1 (Blue) and Tokina 19-35mm f/3.5-4.5 AF 235 lens)

*The Black Swan breeds mainly in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia and was unknown in Europe until a few hundred years ago. When the Roman satirist Juvenal wrote in 82 AD of "a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan," he was saying as a black swan did not exist, neither did the supposed characteristics of the 'rare bird' with which it was being compared. For the next 1500 years the black swan existed in the European imagination as a metaphor for that which could not exist, and the phrase "all swans are white" was used as a standard example of a well-known truth. Imagine the surprise, then, when The Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh sighted a black swan in 1697 on the western coast of Australia. Today, a black swan event is a large-impact, perceived impossibility that actually came to pass. - from WWW, no source given.

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Nina Simone - Black Swan (recorded live, 12 April 1963, at her first solo performance at Carnegie Hall in New York NY)

One year ago:
Lacock Abbey NT