Local wildlife

We are living in a two bedroom apartment in the town of Uxbridge. If you're looking for it on a map, it's about five miles straight north of London's Heathrow Airport. The apartment is much larger than I had anticipated, and it's plenty large for the four of us. Uxbridge is about 15-20 miles from central London, and is the last stop on two different Tube lines. We've found it very easy to get around, even without a car. Our place is an easy ten-minute walk from the center of town, the Tube station, and Darrell's office.

These are some of our new neighbors. There are canals all over the Uxbridge area, and our building sits right on one of them. There is a small island in front of our building, which is right outside our living room window. This family of swans has been here a lot. Since the mommy and daddy swan have five babies, Katrina has named all of them for her best friend's family, which also has five kids. The baby swans are growing up very fast. This photo was taken several days ago, and the babies are much bigger now. They left lots of feathers behind this morning as the babies are losing their gray baby feathers and starting to turn white like the parents.


Here's the sign of the restaurant/pub next door. It's called the Swan & Bottle (the name is very faint on the sign above the big gold "Chef & Brewer" words). You can see part of our building on the right. I'm thinking that ours is not the first family of swans to live here!