I'm sitting close to the pond within 10 metres of 2 Canada Geese who are standing still near to a newly hatched gosling which is sitting on the ground.
Earlier this week I saw a pair of geese with I think 6 goslings moving in pond 2. Later there were only 4 and I watched them moving to pond 3 to escape the aggressive attention of some swans. This evening I could not see any of the geese and goslings, perhaps they were hiding.A woman came close to stop her dog approaching the gosling in this Vale of Health pond. She told me that originally there were 5 goslings here and 'it's the pike that get them'.
Then I saw the spreading ripples in the smooth surface of the water where a bird had dived to catch fish. I counted the seconds up to about 10 when something - it looked like two creatures locked together - surfaced for less than a second and dived immediately, starting another set of ripples. This time I counted up to 40 seconds but nothing surfaced.
The trees are so still and so is the water. The houses too, and the cloud layer, and the radio mast. I can see a few ducks moving and I can feel some mosquitos moving near and on my face. I find it difficult to imagine that this still scene, on a planet, is itself moving (relative to the moon, the sun, or any other point in space) at immense velocities... How surprising is stillness, yet we imagine it as the norm.
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