Caffeine is an essential element of being a coach – they don’t teach you that in training but I find several shots of strong coffee between appointments keeps me alert and on my toes.  The down side of course is that you can potentially overdose.

I feared today I had caffeine induced hallucinations.  It’s never happened before but I’ve never seen a chicken in the park before.  Ducks and gulls, yes, but not chickens.

But it was a real chicken and I have the photographs to prove it!

Now this chuck is a charmer.  As soon as he noticed I was taking an interest he started to take an interest in me.  Just look how this chicken puffs out the chest. Must be a rooster.

I wanted to get closer but thought I might scare him away.  Doh, silly this chicken was not scared of me.  Quite the opposite in fact, here was a chicken super model wanting to show off.

This bird was not satisfied with a few snaps on the grass.  He was soon following me to show off again.

He is rather handsome in a ruffled sort of way – perfect chicken photography material.

At last I was close enough to look him in the eye with my camera.

But his chicken wasn’t content with being right in my camera lens, he wanted to get in on all the duck shots too.

So I thought I might as well follow him.

But then he looked back and I had second thoughts.

I know these roosters can be mad and manic.  I know when to back off.

I love the colours of this rooster and the main difficulty with photographing him is deciding which of the shots showed off his character to best effect.  For me it’s the last shot where there is that rooster menace look.  What do you think?