Battle of the Swans

The Taylor Dam is about 5 km south of Blenheim via Taylor Pass Road. It is a large earth dam built in 1965 to control flooding within Blenheim. In other words it is a flood retention dam.
The dam reserve area has become a sanctuary for teal, coots, black swan, various types of duck and pukeko.
It is attractively set among large trees which are a picture in autumn and provide much needed shade for picnicking on hot summer days.
I drove up there today with my DSLR camera in order to capture some of the birdlife. It was a beautiful still sunny morning but with a strong light making for challenging photography.
I took bread for the water birds and soon had a large number of black swans of varying sizes and ages vying for tidbits.
There are many juveniles on the dam at present. Big ones, small ones and medium sized ones. I saw three tiny cygnets when I visited yesterday but they were nowhere to be seen this morning. I hope the eels haven't got them!
The swans make for fascinating study. There is a definite pecking order. The older ones puff themselves up, even their neck feathers puff out, in order to look as big and menacing as possible. Menacing even to humans.. They can be very nasty to the younger generation. I saw some quite vicious attacks this morning all over little bits of bread.
I pondered on which image to blip today. I had some quite nice ones of the swans looking graceful and serene albeit on the make for food. Tranquil images. A bit boring I thought.
Then again there were a handful of images depicting quite different behaviour. I chose one of those. With all the action, the nastiness as one big bully of a bird chased off a younger competitor. Gotcha!