Geese, more geese and a rugby-playing flamingo

After an evening feasting on venison and cheese cake, the word 'slim' readily springs to mind.  I am firmly averse to dieting when friends and family are around, so came up with a much better idea.  Off to Slimbridge for the day!

Slimbridge was the first wetland centre of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and is located on the Severn estuary, about 50 minutes' drive from my home.  It was founded in 1946 by Peter Scott - someone I remember very well for his Look programmes on BBC television, when I was a kid.

Dedicated twitchers, with their weighty binoculars and telephoto lenses, mostly head for the hides that overlook the Severn estuary wetlands.  We joined them for a while, but preferred to wander the acres of

ponds and lagoons that are home to creatures from every corner of the globe (if a globe can have corners, that is).  We learned that the flamingos are fed a special diet to keep them 'in the pink'; without it they'd turn white. We saw an otter, a couple of field mice (how nice to see one that the cat hasn't brought home), but mostly ducks and geese.  Quite how they prevent the North American ducks wandering off to the European area, or the Chinese ducks taking up residence in Africa, is a mystery to me, but it all seem to work very well.

Star of the show, however, was the flamingo in the centre of this photo, who is a fully paid-up member of the Rugby Football Union.  If you're baffled, click the photo for a closer look.  One for the Twickenham Twitchers perhaps?