8 for effort, nil for result

I guess it's time I do a final update on the moorhens. My last post was on Wednesday 2nd September. I went to check on them on the following Friday morning, and, for the 30 minutes I was around, one of the parents was on the nest, and not moving. The following day, I detoured before doing my patch check, and, once again, one of the parents was on the nest. It was visibly agitated, and within 5 minutes of me being there got up and went to check on the side of the tyre where I think one chick had fallen down. As it was up, another chick started going down:



and ended up on the mud as it was low tide. It did venture in the bit of water on the left of the photo, but the parent did push it back onto relatively safer ground and cleaned it up.



I could see one dead chick and one egg still in the nest. I stayed watching for a while, and nothing much changed, but I had to go. I checked again the next 2 mornings, but could only ever found 1 of the parents. I glimpsed the other one once from a distance on the raft of rubbish on the other side of the boat, but could not see if it had any chick in tow. Then, on Wednesday, at high tide, I found both birds preening on their favourite spot below the back of the boat. I think it's fairly safe to assume that they've sadly failed again.

At least, not all birds have failed in that area, the pair of swans nesting on the floating platform among the boats had one cygnet.
From this on 10 June:






to this on 27th June:





to this on 30th August:





A mallard also managed to raise 9 young to adult size in the area, which I think is no mean feat.


Having a nap on 3rd August in the swans' nesting platform

20 March 2009

With my sister over from France and the weather looking nice, we decided to go and spend the afternoon at the Wetland Centre. It is my first visit this year, probably the first year I wait so long to go there. When we crossed Hammersmith Bridge on the bus, tide was quite low and it was immediately obvious that the black headed gulls are pretty much all gone from there as well.
We spent most of our time in the captive birds part of the reserve, in part as I wanted to see the Demoiselle Cranes which I had not seen yet since they arrived back in November (I think), and take photos of them for my parents who are cranes 'fans'. Not as exciting obviously as when a common crane flew over their house a few weeks ago as they were gardening (they're quite on the outside of their migration route through France, but occasionally one of them strays a bit from the path), but quite nice nevertheless.

It was grooming time, it seems, a constant throughout our visit. This mandarin duck in the same pen was no exception:

I was reminded reading ShySongbird's blog a few weeks ago that, when I was a youngster, I did not seem to have a roll of film without a black swan on it. I'll have to have a look one day to see if my memory is playing tricks with me, but in the meantime, here are some more:


It was grooming time for them as well...