Saturday:

Good weather, so we went (cycled, really) to the London Wetland Centre. Part of it is sort of a bird zoo, with water birds from various parts of the world. They live out in the open but have had their wings clipped, I think. A larger part is just wetlands, open for any bird who happens to pass. A fair proportion of their guests are common ones such as mallards (Swe. gräsand, Est. sinikael-part) and Canada geese, and quite a lot of pigeons as well… Also coots and moorhens (sothöna and rörhöna / lauk and tait), gulls and terns, and then of course numerous other critters we had no names for.

(Nice to link Swedish names of birds I know, to English names of birds I’ve heard of. Google is good! I now also know that kabbleka / varsakabi is called marsh marigold in English.)

In fact we were a bit surprised that the pigeons hadn’t just taken over. There’s free food after all. We asked one of the staff what they did to control the pigeons. He didn’t really know (I guess we picked the wrong person) but mentioned that they try to make the feeding stations less appealing to pigeons – covered trays on the water’s edge, instead of open trays, etc.

Mallards are all used to people I guess, and coots were walking happily on the paths. For shyer birds, a large area had been declared off-limits for walkers. There are viewing stations (huts with lots of windows on all sides) on the edge of that area for bird-watchers. The most serious ones had obviously installed themselves for a long session, with big cameras / telescopes, books and notepads. The Wetland Centre even publish their sightings of rarer birds.

Me, I didn’t really care much about what species they all were… I just liked the sunshine, greenery and open air, and seeing birds up close. For example, one small group of ducks very kindly did their diving in shallow water just next to a wooden platform, so we could see them from above as they dived down and swam underwater. It was interesting to see how they moved – for example, how they flexed and folded their feet, how they held them out towards the side while swimming, and how they spread out their tail feathers for better control under water.

Sunday:
Household tasks – ironing shirts, shopping for groceries, cooking dinner. Plus baking a cake, the first one I’ve made since Christmas – I got a sudden longing for rhubarb cake. I found an Estonian recipe on the web, and it came out just like a rhubarb cake is supposed to be: juicy-soft and sour-sweet. Mmmm.