DID I MENTION THE TURTLES!

No wonder there is a population explosion with this many storks around. There must be a lot of baby deliveries. Joking aside we are in stork land (not the butter substitute) and it's lovely to see them flying overhead. At the Orangerie Park in Strasbourg they are virtually endemic, wandering around, nesting on the Orangerie. It's unusual to get so close to them.

Nesting on the chimney tops.

When the stork in the sky flew over there was a almighty commotion from the birds in the nest. There were parents in the nest and a young stork. Who knows what the angst is?

Stork wandering.

Storks aside we live in and among .....'bald as a coot'. Yes coots. We don't feel they are very good parents. Their very young chicks literally fall out of their nest off the propeller of an adjacent boat. Parents there to guide, protect? Not really. We've been monitoring their progress. The parenting skills seem to be '0'. They come out from the nest as a family but soon loose each other. The parents go off foraging for food independently and the young are left. All of a sudden chaos breaks out. Both parents have realised they have no idea where the chicks are. You can see/hear the angst. 'I left the kids with you!' 'No I thought you were looking after them'. 'No I said......' OK where are they? Lots of calling and they are usually found. The other day after this normal exchange a massive commotion occurred. A black backed gull came from nowhere and plucked up one of the chicks for lunch!! Margaret was out. I relayed the story. 'Well why didn't you throw stones at the gull?' Unfortunately we were fresh out of stones on Soraya! Good news there are still two coot chicks left. I did not realise they are 'ginger tossers' like myself. Actually they look like a couple of hairy conkers. They are very sweet.

The remaining 2.

Going back to the blog post title, we were in the Orangerie Park and in the lake were turtles, lots. You didn't see them at first. The more you looked the more you saw. This was amongst rowing boats. All very European. More of that later, we are in the 'Capitale Européenne'.

Afternoon tea, a beech leaf.