I'm temporarily without transport at the moment so when the light came good earlier this week I thought I'd go and pay a visit to the new celebrities on our local lake... Swans mate for life as far as I understand, and the closeness between the parents and their young (known as 'cygnets' for those not aware) was clear for all to see. I captured this image during what must have been dinner time as she kept diving beneath only to resurface and be greeted by several eager beaks (notice her wet head). All this went on while 'dad' protectively swam a gentle perimeter, hissing at any ducks or people getting too close for comfort! I could have done with a way bigger lens (shot this @ 200mm) so had to do lots of manoeuvring and waiting to get any shots with the birds a decent size in the frame... even this one is a pretty heavy crop, but still just about printable (though certainly not to any massive sort of size). Editing was minimal, just removal of a couple of distractions on the water's surface, and a gentle amount of noise reduction.... the 'low key' effect was purely through manual exposure and fiddling with the vignette during the RAW conversion. Nawww ain't they fluffy :D (no time for comments at the moment, sorry!)