Are all babies beautiful?

As part of the salute to the Rolls-Royce legacy some of Britain’s most famous wartime aircraft powered by the famous Rolls-Royce Merlin engine performed a display over Dover harbour, and of course St Margaret's. There was also a solo return flight to France by a Spitfire.

I think that this is a Spitfire, but I'm not 100% as I even worse on old planes than I am on birds.

I suspect that this group is two Hurricanes and one Spitfire, (back right)

.(I'm wrong here, the top two are Spitfires, the left one being an early model and the right hand one a later one, the bottom one is a Hurricane).

After a visit to the garage I took a walk at Kearsney Abbey. Coots nests are quite variable, but this one is one of the largest I've seen, perhaps it's a traditional site.

Assuming that it is the female on the nest, the male visited about every five minutes with various offerings.

At this time she would shuffle a bit and a youngster appeared from under her wing. It would be unkind to suggest that she kept it hidden under there because it's such an ugly baby, but pretty it isn't.

Near by there was a pair of Mute Swans with a single cygnet. There were definitely no others around and as it is usual to see families with six or more youngsters I wondered what had happened to this pair. Was it the weather, well it hasn't been good, but surely not that bad, or had some the had some calamity.

The only child was certainly getting a lot of attention from the parents and despite Hans Christian Anderson's evolutionarily challenged fairy story.there was nothing of the ugly duckling about this baby.