We went to Slimbridge this morning, to rendezvous with L and take charge of the Boy Wonder for a couple of days. The weather wasn’t great, but he still elected to spend some time in the reserve rather than going straight home. Before he turned four this was a pretty reasonable day out, because R and I are both WWT members and the Boy was allowed in free, but we now have to pay a slightly eye-watering admission charge for him, as well as buying lunch and suffering the inevitable visit to the gift shop. On our last visit the member of staff who booked us in suggested that we should add him to our membership, but that’s a little complicated, so I merely said that I’d think about it. Today’s receptionist did better, scoring a direct hit by pointing out that a junior gift membership would pay for itself in just two visits, and offering to sign up the Boy on the spot – so he’s now an official supporter of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.
After his own lunch B wanted to feed the birds, which took quite a long time because he was determined to share out his little bag of food as fairly as possible among the waterfowl on Swan Lake. He then decided to go to Welly Boot Land, but set off determinedly in the wrong direction and ended up on the boardwalk leading to the duck decoy. Realising that he’d gone astray, he was inclined to blame the grandparent who had in fact spent the past several minutes trying to encourage him to change course, and there was quite a bit of bitterness and recrimination flying about, when he was suddenly and completely distracted by spotting a pair of Coots feeding four chicks on the marshy ground below the boardwalk.
“Aren’t they sweet?!” I said, but got no response other than a dubious frown. So, not sweet then. But definitely interesting, and well worth following and watching as they all scuttled around, and passed backwards and forwards under the boardwalk. And happily, I managed to make up for my “sweet” faux pas, when I told the Boy that adult Coots are very fierce and would certainly defend their babies ferociously against any other animal or bird that threatened them – just about a minute before a Mallard came hurtling hell for leather across the boggy pool, pursued by a furious Coot parent. Maintaining a position of influence with him is only going to get harder as the Boy gets older, but at least for today I was relieved to have restored my reputation as a reliable source of information.
