Houseboats on the Lea Navigation

Wonderful capture! Love the presence of the geese and swans! Stay well!

Admired in: www.ipernity.com/group/tolerance

Roy has had a gander and suggested a slight crop.

Agree. Done.

Another picture initially rejected as insufficiently interesting, but with a couple of extra geese and a pair of swans (one, actually) added, it's quite a pleasing scene which I like. It was taken while waiting for a rail replacement bus which never came.

The bird is no digital artifact; it's a proper gander.

Having cropped the picture as he wanted, made the swans different and replaced a goose with a duck, all to humour him, I'd like him to express some appreciation of my efforts.

Having walked every inch of every waterway within day-trip reach of Ealing, and desperate to find something new, I plotted a circular walk from Wolvercote to the bridge at Eynsham, realising though that it's a little dull and probably at the moment muddy and slippery on the Thames Path. But in the process I then found a much more interesting and varied (villagey) walk from Charlbury: - not much further away - via Finstock and Stonesfield.

I don't know why you rejected it, because it's a lot better than the two squares, despite the birdlife looking a bit regimented. I think it's the glow on the water that makes the picture.

How did you get home then without a bus?

I rejected it because in its original form it's rather unprepossessing, the waterway being wide and not picturesquely narrow with relatively little interest on the far bank, and without the swans (an afterthought) and the duck there was too much empty water SE.

The birds do look regimented but they actually do swim two or more abreast.

We carried on walking down the New River to Broxbourne, from where trains were running.

The similarity between the two swans is quite amazing, but I haven't noticed any ducks yet.

Look again.

I've only just seen your reply of two days ago (the one with the Charlbury photo),
as it has appeared out of sequence and did not show up on my news page.

Roy says thanks, but he's still looking for the duck.
(He's gone to fetch his field glasses.)

See note.

What kind of duck is that supposed to be?

An Abingdon one, from Abingdon Bridge, but those might just have been horrible Canada Geese as well. Is this better?