Stratford

During the year R and I celebrate (in an extremely low-key way, as befits people of our advanced age) two anniversaries. Our wedding anniversary, which is in May, is able if necessary to spread over two days because that's what the wedding did, but on the first of March we remember our first formal "date". This event took place thirty eight years ago now, which means that my relationship with R has endured roughly thirty seven and a half years longer than any other partnership in my life. He seems to have become a habit.

So anyway, in pursuit of nostalgia and outrageous numbers of calories, we went to Stratford for lunch. I'd already photographed a hoverfly in the garden this morning, in a brief pause between wintry downpours, so I debated leaving the cameras at home, but R was Not Keen. "If there's a kingfisher," he said, "and you haven't got a camera with you, I'll never hear the last of it." True love, you see? 

I took the point though, and a camera, and because of this was able to catch these two photos along the river. The young swan was one of three that took off from the pool by the Old Tramway bridge as we were walking along the RST boardwalk, and I picked one and tracked it as they came past us. Mute Swans always look a little scabby to me as they're moulting out of their juvenile plumage into the white of adulthood, but I rather like this shot for the way it shows up the layers of flight feathers on the nearer wing. By contrast the Black-headed Gull, which was perched on a mooring post on the Bancroft wharf, has finished its transformation to breeding plumage, and is looking very smart.