Monday, February 05, 2007

Swans in Flight

This weekend while riding, I saw something that I have never (to the best of my knowledge) seen before; a swan in flight. I guess I may have seen them and I just never thought of it when it happened before, but there it is!

The reason it was memorable this weekend was not for the fact that I was seeing a bird, roughly the size of Cessna, coming into a landing in the middle of a busy road. Imagine a weekend pilot bringing in a small plane in the middle of a major traffic artery.

The time was at rush hour on Friday night as I was riding, the place was the Kingston Bridge; the main connector between Kingston-Upon-Thames and Teddington. The huge feathered creature came into land on the center line of the bridge; oblivious to the honking of the cars, he just kept coming in and landed.

Luckily, there were no accidents. The traffic, in fact, seems as if this were not a totally uncommon occurrence. Strange! Once landed, the bird strolled to the verge, deftly hopped the guardrail and walked down the sidewalk to the abutment. There he slunk off and jumped into the Thames. Why the bird didn't just fly the extra twenty feet to the river, I have no idea, I guess he just got tired of flying.

I hope wherever you are today, you see something noteworthy!

Don Bergquist - 05 February 2007 - Thames Ditton, Surrey, UK

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