After our move to pastures new on April 4^th the good lady and I finally made it back for a look at Beveridge Park in Kirkcaldy on June 1^st.

The swans look to have four cygnets this year. (They may have had more and lost some but it was almost two months since we’d been at the park so wouldn’t know about that.)

Photographed on Tuesday from a back window in my new house in a part of Balbirnie Woods adjacent to the golf course (Balbirnie Golf Club.)

This one looks like a stag.

The good lady nicked the cropped photo:-

This one may be a hind but it was twisting round so it was difficult to tell.

Looking uphill. Almost no part of the path through the park was uncovered by leaves here.

From higher up the path looking back downhill:-

More of the swans. Leaves well on the turn behind:-

We saw a heron in the park a week or so ago but had no camera on us at the time. It wasn’t there the last time we went round but today….

I took this from across the pond in case it took off.

No worries. This was taken from the boating jetty. Much closer view.

From Menstrie we moved on to an antiques centre just outside Doune in Stirlingshire where both the good lady and myself bought books.

The one I stumbled upon was Recent English Architecture 1920-1940. Published by Country Life, the content was “selected by the English Architecture Club.” Its cover is shown below.

Lots of great Art Deco buildings are pictured inside. The cover illustration is of Woodside Ventilation Station, Mersey Tunnel, Liverpool. It’s one of those brooding, monolithic, Stalinistic edifices.

From Doune we retreated to Bridge of Allan where we dined out (which is to say we dined inside, of course.)

Afterwards we took a stroll through the town and over its eponymous bridge where I spotted this heron in the Allan Water.

This bird is a bit scruffy looking but they’re fascinating creatures. I don’t remember it moving at all while we were watching it.

(Not to mention several ducks.) In Beveridge Park, Kirkcaldy, 22/7/2013.

We hadn’t seen all five cygnets the previous twice we’d been to the park before I took this photo so were pleased to see there wasn’t one missing this time.

They’re showing some adult plumage now.

At the back end of May I took this photo of this year’s Beveridge Park cygnets (still six) – not to mention the parents and a duck.

About a week ago in the Beveridge Park I took these two photos of 6 cygnets and an army of goslings. You can see trailing from her mouth the weed the pen has pulled up from the bottom of the pond to feed the cygnets.

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For a good few years now a pair of swans has lived on the pond in Beveridge Park, Kirkcaldy.

The cob is a vicious so-and-so, he often chases the geese and other birds which inhabit the pond even if they are not in anyway threatening him or in his space. We once saw him try to drown a goose, grabbing its neck and holding it under the water. After a struggle the goose escaped eventually. We have heard that the cob did manage to drown a dog once, though.

Despite his tendencies he and his pen have not produced many successful offspring. Up to this year only one of their cygnets has made it to adulthood.

This year they hatched two. This is them in late springtime.

Here they are against a wider background including leisure boats, some of which are swan shaped pedalos.

This was the family a couple of weeks ago with the cygnets much bigger.

Looks like the parents may be getting the hang of raising their young.

The day I was in Dysart this cormorant was perched on a rock by the seashore. The photo’s a bit hazy since I had to use the zoom.

A few weeks before I had caught this one – perhaps the same one – atop a pole in the sea off Ravenscraig Beach, Kirkcaldy.

In the background to the left of the ship you can see the prominent landmark of North Berwick Law on the south bank of the Forth estuary.