swan dive

With Winter well in retreat the lakes and inlets to them are clearing and the Swans (parked over the lake in slightly warmer regions like Estonia) are starting to return to Finland to begin the nesting season.

I thought that this year we have had a more rapid thaw than previous winters, even though we have had far more snow than recent years.

(As an aside I will be interested to see how next year fares as the Climate change debate took a swift kick by those who seek to deny evidence rather than examine it carefully. It will be interesting to see how fickle the public is if next winter is warm in Europe. I wonder if any of those who slammed the process of collecting data and examining it will then have the balls to step up and say "heck I was wrong, we just don't know yet, lets keep looking"... but I doubt it)

I found these guys "heads down bum up" doing some team synchronized swimming ...



Well, after a long fly and a loud hoot we all need to fill our bellies. So we decided to see if we could get closer so we towed a small boat over to the inlet at the far end and slowly paddled down ... but we didn't get very close before they were soon aware of us


and soon they were hooting and clearly unhappy ..


even with a slow and quite approach in the rowboat they looked like they started walking across the ice away from us...



so rather than disturb them more, and perhaps force them to fly away we pulled back and "beached" (on the ice). Perhaps being exposed to us may have let us get closer the next day (although we didn't end up trying).

Strangely the Skido did not bother them as my father in law roared around the area within half the distance we got to.

This backs up other experiences I've had in Australia where nesting river birds are totally unconcerned about the "noisy jetSki hooligans" but very agitated about the bird watchers attempting to get close.

... I'm sure however it would be another story if he'd stopped.

So with that under our belts we though we'd head back to our nest where the Skido driver and boat owner got a well deserved rest with the grand kids.