Ducklings!

I have been walking around the campus these few days, hoping to catch sight of more spring babies. And I was not disappointed. The mandarin mallard ducklings have hatched, and they are swimming around with their parents.

Their parents are cute enough, and the tiny ones are simply adorable. And they are tiny indeed, especially after I have seen the gooslings and the swan chicks(anyone knows if there is a word for this?). But though they are small, they swim and run very fast. So fast that my poor little camera could only snap blur images of them.

And they have to. In such a crowded environment where swans, geeses, moor hens, coots and ducks are jostling for limited nesting places, they can be chased and pecked to death anytime by another adult bird. Already this evening, a Canadian goose was chasing after a batch of them when they swam too close. Only the presence of a human, that is me :), prevented the goose from chasing them all the way up the bank.

Each mother duck has about 10 to 12 ducklings, and it is quite amusing to see so many of them swarming around the mother. 12 ducklings per clutch seems like a lot, until you consider the hostile environment they are in. Besides the nesting birds, there are also those weaker birds who have lost the fight for territory, and the victor's ducklings seems like a natural target to reduce the competitor's gene pool. The weather here is very fickle too. Today the temperature is 17C, but this weekend, we are expecting a below 5C cold spell. So I don't expect most of ducklings will survive beyond summer, otherwise there should be more ducks than what I am seeing here.

Lake District

Just came back from a three days visit to the Lake District. As its name suggest, the area has lots of lakes. The interesting thing is that the lakes all radiate out like the spokes of a wheel, with its centre at the highest point, Scafell.
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If you have ever visit New Zealand's lakes in South Island, or the lakes in Canada, the scenery is not unlike these places. But the difference is that the region is just a compact thirty miles across, so it takes less than 30 minutes to move from one point to another.

I'll talk about the specific places that I visited in separate blog entries.

The scenery is nice enough, but as many of the trees are still in their wintry brown, I think it will be better in late spring or summer when they turn green again. The white swans there impressed me though. There aren't any resident white swans on campus, so this is the first time I get a really closeup look at them, and they are much bigger than I had imagined. The adult swan, when it straightened up, reached up to my neck level. They could easily peck out my eyes if they want to. Their chicks are the size of ducks, so you can imagine the size of the adult. When they fly, the sound of their wings whooshing against the air can be heard 30 metres away. Impressive!

Overall it was a good break. One good thing about going on this tour is that it forces me to leave behind my daily routine. The second good thing about this tour is that it gives me lots of exercise. I am on my feet the whole day except during meal times, with lots of climbing. At the end of it, my body was feeling rather ached, not unlike the "high" I feel after a long run.

So, here are Yeow Cheong's tips for a refreshing break:
1. Don't bring your work along.
2. Engage in prolonged physical activities of substainable intensity, until you feel some slight aches in your body.
3. Avoid mental activities that stresses the body (like planning how to re-mortgage your loan)

Have a good break.