There is a waterhen brooding over her clutch on a nest she has carefully built on the erroneously named “duckboard” of an adjoining boat. Another had been entertaining us all morning as she happily showed her two chicks the ins and outs of life in a port which was as still as the sky was blue.
Our morning tranquility was broken by one of the sounds we abhor the most, that of an over-used bow thruster. We watched for tens of minutes while the accompanying boat was tied, untied, moved, unmoved and retied, all the while accompanied by that awful grinding noise that thruster propellers make as they cavitate, struggling to take a grasp of the water.
When it was over, the former tranquility in the port was replaced by the distressed calling of the mother hen, her chicks floating motionless and dishevelled, apparently after having discovered the inner workings of the thruster tube. Sad though this was to witness, it did explain the reason the angry bird which sits on the roof of the city hall glares at people from boats as they pass.
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