This photo shows just how beautiful these birds are. I just love the dark marking from the beak, across the eye to the extended plumage at the back of the head, and I’m just so entranced by the “cloak” of long white feathers around his shoulders and down his chest. He’s certainly not the most elegant of birds, but his ungainly stance is far outweighed by his beautiful plumage!!

This is the last of my photographs taken Spring 2012 of our walk through the leafy glad along the river bank to the wide open Salhouse Broad. Having returned home and uploaded my photo of a gnarled oak I left the photo up on my monitor to have a cup of afternoon tea and a piece of home made cake – very old-fashioned and traditional English “afternoon tea”.

It’s so easy to walk along any of our rivers or Broads in Norfolk and find Canada geese and mallard ducks, so you can imagine how eager we were to photograph this Egyptian goose with her two goslings. I suspect she probably started off with a fair gaggle but, due to pike in the river, it’s not unusual to find the numbers slowly dwindling over the weeks. Let’s hope this pair live a long and happy life