How many swans a swimming?

Thought I’d visit Wellington Beach on the weekend. I don’t often go there in winter. It’s usually nothing but mounds of ice covered by snow covered by more ice. Something like this:

Ice mounds on the left, gravel and sand covered by snow. Lots of dog walking goes on here!

I walked to the channel that connects West Lake with Lake Ontario – this is the channel used for the August Dragon Boat races, and the link for sail boats, motor launches and SUPs to get from Wellington marina and the small, shallow lake to the huge, deep lake. In the summer. Right now – just a whole lot of ice!

And Canada Geese:

A gaggle of Canada Geese enjoying a relatively balmy Saturday morning.

And swans

Diving for breakfast in Wellington Channel.

Did I say swans, plural? Actually, there was only one swan in the water Saturday morning. And it wasn’t where I wanted it to be, in front of the dramatic snow shelf near the mouth of the channel. So, instead of vacuuming or reading or pruning my dwarf cherry trees, I sat at my desk (it started to snow, after all) and played with Photoshop.

Here’s the original shot:

And here are two shots of the same swan, one while a swimming, the other while a diving for food. I ‘selected’ and copied the bird from these two shots and pasted them into the first:

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Don’t zoom in too much on the first shot! I’m a novice with Photoshop and I have a (relatively) old version; there are ragged edges on my overlaid swans. Best to view the big beautiful white birds from a distance, both in person and in my photo!