Collaboration

From a distance they looked like a mother with a relatively new brood. That really would be a first for October!

We slowed down and followed them and they paddled up the middle of the cut in front of us.

She really looked as though she was shepherding them to safer waters.

It was only when we got closer (should have been earlier, really) that we realised this was a multi-species event, not a mother with brood at all. The goose, we think, was a greylag, though we're open to correction. The ducks seemed to be a collection of young adult mallards. How they all got together to behave like a family group, who knows? Who adopted who?

We had a conversation today with a boater who helped us up Wheaton Aston lock. He was lamenting what he saw as a decline in courtesy on the cut. Yesterday, I have to say, we both benefited from, and were able to contribute towards, a collaborative effort with other boaters while coming up the Tyrley locks. Two posts ago I mentioned that I had re-written a couple of lines from "October Song". One of them emerged as: "But the one who finds the way of peace will never be forsaken". I enjoyed singing that.