Arrived in Slimbridge!

After four days of travel I finally made it to  Slimbridge day-before-yesterday. Yesterday I went for a walk around the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) Center

view of the grounds

and saw more ducks, geese and swans than I have ever seen before. I recognized Konrad Lorenz's beloved greylag geese,

greylag goose

and the barnacle geese, bar-headed geese

bar-headed geese in foreground

and red-breasted geese



that were featured in the movie Winged Migration. I saw many nene  geese too, their right wings foreshortened (pinioned) to render them flightless as is required by law. I watched a young boy crouch down and extend his hand with food toward a nene. He was thrilled when it ate what he dribbled on the ground.

Of course it's against the law to feed nene in Hawaii to keep wild birds from getting too used to humans. Still there is something poignant--and I think important--in seeing that connection made between human and animal.

It was Mother's Day and sunny and warm, so there were many families and lots of children visiting. I watched a little girl in a pink jacket toddling after some ducks, pointing and jabbering away with a big smile on her face.

human family meets nene family

The motto on the back of staff shirts says "Preserve, Protect and Inspire" and I was inspired by watching youngsters connecting with birds and truly enjoying it. I found myself wondering how we can do the same for our Hawaiian species. After two hours I reached overload before I got all the way around the circuit, so I left the rest for another day.
This morning I met Sparky the head of aviculture and some of the other people in that department and had a look around their pens and brooding and incubation rooms. The breeding pens are large and the birds there and in the Center seem content and unstressed. Tomorrow I will start work.