Synchronized diving

When I was surfing the TV channels I came across the Olympic trials for Woman’s Synchronized Diving. What a beguiling sport! If a sport can be called, 'lovely', this word certainly applies to synchronized diving. I was mesmerized watching the women perform. Their graceful twists and turns seemed effortless as they dived into the water with almost perfect timing. It takes exquisite skill and a high degree of aestheticism to achieve such beautiful dives.

Having been unaware that the sport existed, I was surprised to learn synchronized diving had been a new form of competitive diving at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

Back in the 1930's, Aquacades and swimming meets would showcase precision swimming where a group of swimmers would create designs in the water and morph from one design into another. On occasion there might be a display of synchronized diving as a skillful stunt much like those in a circus.

Now that its a recognized sport, it's hard to believe it took so many years for it to become a competitive sport.

I understand there is a special way of judging the events. Both men and women compete in two events. Two divers of the same gender attempt the same dive from adjacent 3 meter springboards, but share the platform on the 10 meter board. Each diver has one of the nine judges watching his or her performance in addition to that of the other five judges.

Roseline Filion (foreground) and Meaghan Benfeito
Photograph by: Mike Ridewood

Photo Credit and Story Link:
Roseline Filion (foreground) of Laval, Que. and Meaghan Benfeito of Montreal compete in the preliminary for women’s synchronized 10m platform at the FINA Visa Diving World Cup at Olympic Aquatic Centre in London,
England, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012.
Photograph by: Mike Ridewood

Canary babies

I'm glad to report two canary babies are busy learning bird language from their parents. I'm sad to say that the third baby didn't make it, but the two that did are replicas of the parents. Only their size lets me know which are the babies and which are parents. Its too soon to tell if the lighter brown will be female as is the mother and the darker brown with black patterns on the wings will be male like the father.

Both parents feed them and their little wings flutter like a hummingbirds as they hold their mouths open as wide as possible to be fed. They are learning to fly from perch to perch across the cage and they like sitting and balancing on the swing.

Hooray!

Hooray! One of the baby canaries is out of the nest.

I didn't see when or how it happened. I just discovered the little guy sitting on the floor of the cage in the late morning.

As the day went on, he hopped around the bottom of the cage and when the parents fed him, his little wings went '90 to nothin' as they filled his beak. It hasn't hopped onto the lowest perch yet but it did stand on the foot rest of the seed cup for a while.

It has the same shade of light brown of the mother bird. The two babies still in the nest seem to have the darker color of the father, but they huddle together in such a way its hard to tell one from the other. They fill the nest and its only a matter of a day before another leaves the nest.