Hi there, thanks for reading! The purpose of this blog is to document mine and SwiftDX's frequent visits to Haysden Country Park in Tonbridge. We've been going to the place regularly since late January (2010), and have become rather fond of the familiar avian faces we see there (in particular, "Tuxedo Duck"). We are not nature experts by any stretch of the imagination, though are both starting to take a keen interest in the characteristics of waterfowl. This journal will thus document our observations in a somewhat naive way, though we shall seek answers to our burning questions ("Why does Tuxedo Duck look like that?"). Warning: birds may also be anthropomorphised to ridiculous levels.
I first visited Haysden Park last May (2009), with my partner, SwiftDX, who had visited before but still could not have prepared himself for what we saw there: an entire family of Egyptian Geese, though we knew not what they were at the time, and had certainly never seen anything like them before. We were fascinated by our discovery, though owing to the vast selection of parks we have in Tunbridge Wells it took us a fair while to return and see what we could find of this exotic clan. Sadly, on our second visit in January we did not find any of them, though we instantly fell in love with a peculiar yet beautiful mallard to be named Tuxedo Duck. Having been outcasts back in our respective youths (you would never guess that, of course) we both instantly identified with this chap, who was apparently bullied profusely by the other waterfowl. However, he was very brave, and made up for his status by darting around quickly so that he may get his fair share of our bread offerings. He also hesitated little in taking bread straight from our hands, yet another trait that rendered him different to the other mallards (we would find, later on, that this was probably due to his descent from a more domesticated type of mallard). Tuxedo Duck furthered our enthusiasm to keep visiting the place on almost a weekly basis, and on every visit since 23rd January 2010, he’s come out to see us without fail (though I'm sure the 3 loaves of bread we bring with us act as some sort of incentive there...).
So there's our brief introduction – I plan to relay the Story So Far in more depth through a handful of entries to come, before each of our future visits are logged on a regular basis. I hope you enjoyed reading.
