The worst thing about having my hard drive reinstalled is backing up all of my million fonts and non-standard programs and reinstalling them all again, and getting all the menus set up to my specifications, only to discover that, once again, I forgot to save the joboption files for Acrobat. sigh
Karin and I power-walked for half an hour in Oxie yesterday. Oxie was planned with a gazillion little paths and wandering ways that wind around the residential areas, through greens and parks and shady groves. We saw several rabbits out grazing in the early evening sunshine, who didn’t seem at all bothered by their proximity to humans.
After a delicious dinner of pan-fried lemon-peppered salmon with new potatoes, broccoli and steamed baby yellow carrots, we walked up to the pond to feed the ducks, which is an after-dinner ritual at the in-laws. Each kid had a plastic bag with a few bread heels and bits of knäckebröd. Märta usually gives them a little extra since invariably some of it is eaten before we reach the pond. The mallards were out in force and vying with each other to snatch up the rain of bread from the wooden covered gazebo bridge that crosses the waist of the pond. No baby ducks though, and Märta said she hasn’t seen any this year.
In addition to the jackdaws who love to crash a party whenever they get a chance, there were several aggressive seagulls with brown heads, red beaks and cartoon-character eyes. The black tips of their wing feathers crossed in an X when they were sitting on the water among the mallards, which wasn’t often as they were mostly flying around like maniacs, dive-bombing the ducks and snatching breadcrumbs out of midair. They were Black-headed Gulls, quite the characters.
We were particularly interested in a solitary bird who flew in great swooping circles, also snatching bread in mid-air, but even diving right underwater from high heights to pluck it from under the beaks of the ducks. At first we thought he was one of the gulls, but he kept hovering in front of us, like an overgrown white hummingbird, before he would stoop and dive again. His tail feathers were spread out like a fan, and even though he had a similar red beak, the black on his head was a striped cap instead of a complete bonnet like the gulls. He was literally within arms-reach several times and seemed to be anticipating when the kids would cock an arm to toss bread. We looked him up too, when we got home. This is what a Caspian Tern looks like in hoverbird mode.