Pictures Taken By you...

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...98ae004454.jpg[/QUOTE]

Beautiful colors, YN. Very compelling illusions! :)

I doubt your hypothesis about the swan would stand up to scrutiny, although I suppose it might. We (meaning "you and I," not "science") don't really know how much of the fish the swan sees, but assuming it sees them well and understands what is going on, there is the evolutionary bottom line of whether chasing them away is worth it in terms of food saved vs energy expended. Geese would quickly eat all the bread crumbs on the water and in the box, and given sufficient numbers, violently drive the swan away. That is an existential threat to the swan. But the fish, I imagine, are more like pesky insects are to us: they don't take much, and they come right back if you chase them away. From the point of view of the swan, whose survival is a lot more precarious than ours, they are most probably not worth the energy.

Perhaps the swan is whimsically playing with the fish, although I doubt it. Lunchtime is a serious business in the evolutionary world, and whimsy, in my view, ought to be sought elsewhere. I find it interesting, by the way, that in Iain, you, and me, we have a materialist, an idealist, and a dualist, respectively. At least we've got all our bases covered. :)

I am beginning to see the swan-fish as more like a human-cat or human-dog relationship, but I have no evidence for this at the moment except that the swans are not harming the fish. It could be more like the human-spider relationship.

It may be, as you mention, that the fish are hard to chase away and not worth the energy. However, I suspect the fish provide some benefit to the swans. Perhaps their presence makes the waters safer in some way for the swans. I don't know. Also having food provided is an artificial situation. In the wild, swans would not have that. I wonder how swans in the wild treat fish?

Thanks for the comment on the photo!

You are welcome. It has all kinds of allegorical possibilities between the cage and wall, the beauty of the blossoms (in their own fertile sea), and the blue "Heaven" above. It is a very effective picture.

See if you notice the fish pecking at the underside of the swan at all. I'd be more open to your point of view if they were cleaning the swan's parasites: there's no reason a swan can't take care of that and soften up lunch. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the swan even knows the fish are there. Remember that birds don't have binocular vision. Even if the swan drops its beak, it is still looking to each side and not down into the water. If you've seen it twist its head to one side (as robins do when they are looking for worms), that might suggest concern about the fish. As it is, though, it's highly unlikely that the swan is playing with them, whether it knows they are there or not.

I agree. It is probably the fish being opportunistic and the swan not caring. Here is an article about them: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...e-reserve.html

Regarding the binocular vision, I don't think fish are any better off than the swans. There is a nice picture of swan and fish right up against each other in the link above.

Here is another pigeon perspective picture. I like the white lines on the street.

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...et%20Lines.jpg

Two yellow lines???

Thanks, YN. The pictures in the article are amazing (and wonderfully colored), too. I have seen birds feeding other birds beak to beak, but I assumed they were mothers feeding fledglings. Still, who knows? Nature is full of oddities.

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Originally Posted by Dreamwoven

Two yellow lines???

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They do look yellow, now that you mention it.

Here's the swan coming to get me protecting the babies (cygnets?) in the background. I took a picture and then an alternate route.


http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...d7f7d1563b.jpg

You have actually caught a very nice picture there. The swan even looks angry.

Thanks! The swan looked even angrier with his wings up and walking straight toward me.

We were at the Chicago Botanic Garden today. Here are three pictures:

This one just has all that orange color shooting out over the path:

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...e20Flowers.jpg

Here's a small bird. It had a nice blue shine around its neck, but I wasn't able to capture that:

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...nd20Plants.jpg

And here are a bunch of blooms making a delicate but gaudy display:

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...0All20Over.jpg

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Here's the swan coming to get me protecting the babies (cygnets?) in the background. I took a picture and then an alternate route.


http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...d7f7d1563b.jpg

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How nice of you to have protected the babies, YN. Did you dangle modifiers as bait. :)

I kid, I kid. Great pictures, especially the one of the orange flowers. They look like they are saying: "HEY, HEY! OVER HERE! CHECK US OUT!"

Thanks! I liked that orange one as well with its lack of self-restraint.

Those colours of flowers are really pretty.

I took some photos of a fir tree sprouting new branches a few days ago but crashed my computer when trying to download it to my iPhoto folder, I will try again later today.

I haven't been able to transfer any photos from my computer to the LitNet website, but I have a link to a website of a picture in Washington State which has what I wanted: http://crawford.tardigrade.net/journ...lakepollen.jpg. It shows how fast pines can grow in their early years, the new shoots are almost a doubling of the height of the young tree.

Pine is the natural cover for most of Sweden, and any land without it soon becomes covered with pine shoots. There is also a natural sequence from birch to rowan and then pine. Even with clear-felling this pattern exists as the seeds are in the ground.

I have been putting pictures on Photo Bucket for this site and then cut and paste the links provided there. It also allows me to reduce the size of the picture. I think Flickr would work as well. Maybe Google+. I haven't tried these.

I remember when I was young planting trees for forest companies.