Drama on Seafield Pond

Having only taken a few wild flowers this morning when I was out with the dog I thought I’d take my telephoto lens when I took the dogs out this afternoon. Yesterday at the sea wall I had seen a couple of swans with three cygnets way out in the bay with the background of a large tanker out to sea. However, there was little to photograph today. The swans were not in evidence, the gulls were all clustered together, or flying around haphazardly. I did manage to get one or two decent shots of a lone gull flying close by but that is fairly easy to do any day. I wandered across to Seafield Pond where I could see a lone heron sitting on one of the artificial islands, he was not even in fishing mode, just standing there minding his own business. All of a sudden there was a great to do as another heron tried to land on the island and initially there were aggressive displays between the two herons. However, even more bizarrely a duck which was not even on the floating island but swimming near by, flew at the second heron trying to bite its leg. Both heron duly took off with the angry duck in pursuit and this is what I have captured in my blip.

It reminds me of an incident I witnessed several years ago when a mother duck with several ducklings in tow was swimming on a small pond in the tiger enclosure at a safari park. The tiger grabbed one of the ducklings and swallowed it in a oner but then the mother duck showed tremendous aggression towards the tiger with no thought to its own safety, quacking vollubly at it. It was quite comical to watch.