Free for all

As it was the last day of Eden's 'holiday' today, we decided to take Tinkerbell for a walk down to the floating harbour to feed the swans after lunch. Besides, as none of the birds have been seen for a few days I had plenty of bread that I had bought for them so I thought it would get rid of that too. The sparrow hawks must still be around because I have noticed that the larger birds such as the collared doves, wood pigeons and magpies are also absent from the area as well as the garden birds and song birds.
Anyway, I pulled the bread into small pieces and we set off. It was a pleasant walk across Castle green following the river and eventually we arrived at the spot where we have fed the swans before. At first there were only four but we could see across the river on the pontoons there were quite a lot more and I knew that once they realised someone was feeding the others, they too would come across.
So I threw the first handful of bread to the swans knowing full well what would happen. Suddenly, all hell broke loose as a large number of herring gulls and their offspring screeched, flapped and fought their way to try to get the bread from the swans. The commotion took Tinkerbell by surprise especially when the ferile pigeons arrived and tried to catch any crumbs that fell from the bag right under her nose!
The swans that had been preening themselves on the pontoons soon arrived like the cavalry and luckily I was able to throw the bread so that it fell amongst them and not the gulls. I think the swans have 'wised up' to the behaviour of the gulls because they appear to get into a tight formation, almost like a tight circle, which means the gulls have got less chance of getting a free meal at their expense.
When all the bread was gone, the adolescent seagulls went back to the middle of the river just leaving the swans near the wharf looking for anything they may have missed, the pigeons waddled about on the ground looking for anything they might have missed, while the adult gulls circled around with their evil beady eyes on the footpath looking out for any more suspect bags of food that might be being carried!