baby moorhens

We have seen some baby moorhens at last. We have been waiting for this, knowing that all the while they have been secretly reared in secret nests here and there in the reeds or among overhanging branches on the lakeside. It was well worth the wait. There were two of them, with their mother, running about on a plank that has been moored to the edge of the canal. They are really the most delightfully comical creatures I think I have ever seen – like black balls of fluff wearing clown shoes. Their black feet are enormously too big for their bodies and they run about with their heads lowered in the way the parents do, it is just too lovely! To top it all I saw another of my very favourite new, new things when some children in the park ran up to us with plastic glasses to show us the teeny tiny baby frogs they had caught which were swimming inside. I think they really appreciated getting such an enthusiastic response from adults. I haven't seen tiddly little frogs like that since I was that age myself and had felt rather bereaved at the thought that the tadpoles in the pond would most likely progress to frogdom without me being fortunate enough to see them. It's an extraordinary sight to see a perfectly formed frog, so very much alive, and barely the size of a child's fingernail.
The juvenile ducks weren't there today, but we have recently seen all six of them together again resting under a tree at the side of the pond. At other times they frequent various parts of the canals and go there own way with a very precocious assertion of independence. They, and all the ducklings and duck-mothers on the lake, have been placed on vastly reduced rations of bread after my crisis of conscience over the feeding issue last week. The photo is one of an adult moorhen racing around during breeding season. Until I get a magnificent new camera with a telescopic lens and marvellous magnification, I am afraid that pictures of very young birds are beyond my scope!

the duck-bread dillema

I have been feeling rather guilty after having read on-line that feeding bread to ducks can damage their health, making them overweight and malnourished. On the other hand the London Parks guidelines state that it's ok to give them some bread as long as you don't give them too much. The dilemma! I suppose we will compromise by giving them a very small quantity of healthy wholemeal bread, but part of me wants to be a purist and abstain from what has given us considerable pleasure indeed.
Over the past month we have watched four broods of ducklings emerge on the lake, sitting on a secluded though rather muddy slope, made secret and charming by overhanging trees and ivied banks. There are “the ten”, “the seven” and “the five”, all broods of mallard ducklings, each a little younger than the last. Yesterday a brood of about six tufted ducks appeared, but they were particularly shy and didn't come close to us at all. “The ten” mallards are quite a miracle as not one duckling had been lost from the brood. They are always terribly hungry and converge on scraps of bread with lightning speed. There is an almost frightening milling and zipping around at very high speeds whenever they are being fed. At one stage the mother duck heroically abstained from eating any pieces if her young were trying to get at them. Recently she has joined in the general scramble, snatching bits away from them. No doubt she has started starving after all her weeks of abstinence and watchfulness. Apparently rearing young puts great strain on mother ducks and a lot of them die. I had felt that the bread we managed to give the mothers was helping to sustain the mothers during this time. Can the bits of bread that we have thrown to moorhens and watched them eagerly carry off to their secret and hidden nests to feed their young really be doing them harm? Perhaps it could be helping them survive, I hope so, obviously if ducks, or any other waterfowl are fed to the extent that they stop foraging for their natural food, they will become malnourished and overweight. However I feel that a certain extent of limited feeding actually helps mothers and their ducklings to survive at a very crucial time. In the wild they would be at a greater risk of starvation, as well as being more vulnerable to predation. Having said that, I think feeding wild ducks and other water fowl in a natural environment is really unethical, because it messes with their natural habits and can make them sluggish and less mobile as well as getting them out of the habit of looking for their own food.
I am quite concerned by the effect that feeding has had on the 5 juvenile ducks on the pond, which we watched grow up from little ducklings. At present only 3 of them remain on the pond, I think they have split up into 2 groups, the rest are perhaps somewhere on the canal. Because the pond is so close to the path and quite exposed, they may have come in for a lot more feeding from the general public than most ducks do. They are very big for juveniles and perhaps have become fat and lazy and a bit too tame, inclined to approach groups of people who could harm them, (unfortunately, there are some teenage gangs who are violent and destructive and hang out there sometimes;) and I have not seen them foraging for food very much lately. We have been giving them a few bits of bread when we go past, so perhaps it is a habit we should give up. We have been doing it out of a feeling that they would be missing out somehow if we didn't, when in fact it may not be in their best interests after all.
I do regret having unwittingly done something that could have harmed the health of the ducks we get so much pleasure out of watching. Obviously there is some controversy out there on the Internet about the extent to which its ok to feed urban waterfowl. I really believed that we were helping their survival by supplementing their diet a little bit, but not too much. Fortunately I know that we have not stopped the ducklings from searching for food in their usual style. All of them still paddle and dart about snatching insects from the air. The very youngest are the fastest and seem to skim along the very water-surface, they are so buoyant and light. Recently we enjoyed a particularly inspiring sight. The migrating film of tiny green duckweed had moved to another part of the lake, leaving the water almost perfectly crystal clear, the muddy bottom some 2 feet down perfectly visible. After we had finished feeding “the ten”, some of them started diving to the bottom, looking for food down there. It was incredible to watch them underwater like that. It's hard to describe the brilliance of the moment, the mystery of the underwater and the vital fresh energy that ducklings have. Their sleek, steam-lined duckling forms suddenly transposed into a different world. Searching in a water-world, swimming joyously with a fierce wild energy and completely free in their natural ways. Sleepily, dreamily, some black carp swam past, just to complete the watery mystery of the scene.
At the moment roses are blooming in abundance. The white paper moon trumpets of bindweed (or convolvulvus) are wending their way amongst the other vegetation. White water lilies are glowing mysteriously among the lily pads on the pond. Everywhere flowers that bloomed in spring are being replaced by green seed-pods and fruits that will turn golden-brown, or purple, or red as the summer sun burns down. Spring is over now, the breeding season of the ducks draws to a close. The drakes are all beginning to lose their breeding plumage by degrees. Their iridescent brown heads turning dark brown, the bits that remain, even more brilliantly green when mottled and worked it this way. On a breast that was deep reddish brown , the brand new, pale gold, mottled feathers of the “female” plumage have appeared, making the drake into quite an Egyptian duck, multi-coloured, boasting feathers of brand new gold, freshly enamelled from the Earth's store. In the secret lives of ducklings, mothers watch them beneath the low boughs of shady trees. The waters hold a secret fish world that they can dip into and explore. This young life will grow towards adulthood all too fast.

duck-life

They are almost full-grown ducks now. Well, they are that size, but I think that is mainly because of all the bread they eat. Even we have taken to doing it, not because they need feeding, or because we are really in the habit of duck-feeding that very much, but because it is a way of interacting with them, seeing them up close, watching them grow. A new brood of teeny ducklings has hatched on the lake, on the dark waters overhung with trees in a different part of the park, less accessible than the pond which is right beside the canal-path. There are ten of them and it is always so incredible just how fast they can go – along the surface of the water – chasing insects (which is how they feed themselves right from when they are born.) I guess we will watch these ten (or some of them anyway) growing to fledglings as we have with the five on the pond, but I don't think I will get quite as attached to these new ones. That place in my heart has been filled - I know it is rather silly. In spite of their slightly bullying habits I still feel somehow that they belong to me. Sentimental I guess, they just look so cute. Another fledgling has joined their band. At first it is impossible to tell which one the outsider is – they spend most of their time sleeping in the sun, floating among the lilly pads, fairly well camouflaged. It is when we are feeding them that the difference becomes woefully apparent because our fledglings bully the other one and try to prevent it eating any of the bread. How could they be so mean!! We always manage to feed it anyway by distracting them. It is just an animal instinct, like the way the coot attacks any bird that comes within ten yards of its nest (except the geese of course!). The poor moorhens really get the worst of it, being the smallest. I love the way they chug along like little boats! They get chased by coots and by ducks pretty much wherever they go. They are all secretly nesting somewhere, I know – the moorhens I mean – I even saw one of them trying to climb a tree, how very odd. The very little fish like eating bread too and swarm around the floating bits taking very tiny little nibbles of it. They seem to have produced even tinier little fish, I saw them today – this really confuses me because I thought they may have been the babies of slightly less tiny fish. I'm not quite sure if they are minnows or sticklebacks either so will have more investigating online to do. I think that is enough for now, but there really is so much to see – iridescent brand new dragonflies hovering over the water and the sleuthful, solitary, midnight-black crow who washes his beak at the edge of the pond.

They are almost full-grown ducks now. Well, they are that size, but I think that is mainly because of all the bread they eat. Even we have taken to doing it, not because they need feeding, or because we are really in the habit of duck-feeding that very much, but because it is a way of interacting with them, seeing them up close, watching them grow. A new brood of teeny ducklings has hatched on the lake, on the dark waters overhung with trees in a different part of the park, less accessible than the pond which is right beside the canal-path. There are ten of them and it is always so incredible just how fast they can go – along the surface of the water – chasing insects (which is how they feed themselves right from when they are born.) I guess we will watch these ten (or some of them anyway) growing to fledglings as we have with the five on the pond, but I don't think I will get quite as attached to these new ones. That place in my heart has been filled - I know it is rather silly. In spite of their slightly bullying habits I still feel somehow that they belong to me. Sentimental I guess, they just look so cute. Another fledgling has joined their band. At first it is impossible to tell which one the outsider is – they spend most of their time sleeping in the sun, floating among the lilly pads, fairly well camouflaged. It is when we are feeding them that the difference becomes woefully apparent because our fledglings bully the other one and try to prevent it eating any of the bread. How could they be so mean!! We always manage to feed it anyway by distracting them. It is just an animal instinct, like the way the coot attacks any bird that comes within ten yards of its nest (except the geese of course!). The poor moorhens really get the worst of it, being the smallest. I love the way they chug along like little boats! They get chased by coots and by ducks pretty much wherever they go. They are all secretly nesting somewhere, I know – the moorhens I mean – I even saw one of them trying to climb a tree, how very odd. The very little fish like eating bread too and swarm around the floating bits taking very tiny little nibbles of it. They seem to have produced even tinier little fish, I saw them today – this really confuses me because I thought they may have been the babies of slightly less tiny fish. I'm not quite sure if they are minnows or sticklebacks either so will have more investigating online to do. I think that is enough for now, but there really is so much to see – iridescent brand new dragonflies hovering over the water and the sleuthful, solitary, midnight-black crow who washes his beak at the edge of the pond.

fledglings

it is extraordinary how quickly one becomes disillusioned as soon as one starts being sentimental about animals. It's happened to me time after time – this latest experience was – well – to begin with – my knowledge about the breeding habits of mallards was pretty hazy. The mother of my ducklings, shameless hussy that she is, instead of spending two years devotedly taking care of them, stole away last week after she had been seen flicking tails with a drake in a secret pool nearby. It is due to my palpable and deplorable ignorance that it did not occur to me that I was reading about the kind of mallards that migrate... these ones don't. You'd think I may have remembered not noticing their absence in the winter and all that. And the drake was not their Daddy. No, he legged it as soon as the eggs were laid. The drake we'd fondly imagined was the Dad had only been hanging around their dear mamma waiting to have his wicked way with her as soon as he had persuaded her to abandon her young before they were even properly fledged. Oh the callousness of it all. Bachelor drakes are a bad lot when it comes to mallards, I'm afraid. There are usually more of them than the mummy ducks – and they resort to homosexuality and rape. I read that a drake who had been pursuing another drake that collapsed and died in a field made congress with its corpse. Not only do I have to realise that my adorable ducklings, who are now almost all growed up, and still hang around the pond where they was reared, have a (more than) 50% chance of growing up to be homosexual, necrophiliac rapists, but I actually witnessed one of them today being duck-raped by a bad bachelor drake. He picked on one of the smallest of the five, who was very frightened and distressed by the whole thing – squawking and trying to get away then being half-drowned by having its head pushed underwater when the drake was doing the daddy-duck thing to it. Yeeps I have to admit I was tempted to lob stones at him, only my aim is awful and I couldn't find any stones.
They are looking beautiful anyway in their brand new feathers – all mottley brown like their mother's, the young drakes won't get their male colouring yet. It was amazing how quickly the duckling fluff was replaced by feathers, they should be able to start flying soon, at least that will give them a better chance of escaping from predators, sexual and otherwise. Everything else has been growing with gay abundance. Moorhens racing about in the sun performing their strange mating rituals, coots rearing pathetically cute chicks in their untidy heaps of twigs, starlings hunting in the mud for worms and bathing in the shallow water on the edge of the pond. Mysterious purple columbine appearing in the grass and fresh-faced wild roses opening from pink pointed buds and the yellow irises out in droves around the fringes of the pond. On the weekend little boys – full of mud and energy – were wading in the pond catching tadpoles and the carp it seems has not just one shadowy companion, but at least three, which we saw with him one evening. My researches indicate that they are another variety of carp, because it is usual for various kinds of carp to congregate together and even interbreed. So much for the mystery, but it was very magical to have this sudden view into a secret underwater world.

A subtle change

As the delicate pink blossoms have drifted down from the early trees and been replaced by leaves there has been a last gasp of that fresh spring beauty you only get at the very start - there is something so very newborn about the shy pink of first blossoms - the grass carpeted with petals and the last blossoms against the soft, fresh green of the new leaves. Other trees have sprouted into bloom now – the candle-spires on the horse-chestnut – creamy white or vivid cerise - and the cherry-red or creamy-white of hawthorn blooms.
The starlings have returned and the ducklings are growing apace. They have been learning to do that up-side-down thing that ducks do underwater with their tails in the air. At first I think the mother duck was teaching them, she spent more time below water and upside-down than she did on the surface. Slowly they have been catching on, but they tend to start tipping over, or disappear underwater altogether. I think perhaps they are availing of the abundant squiggling swarms of tadpoles on the pond bottom. The drake keeps watch while they eat and seldom does much feeding himself. His presence is constant now and I found out when reading up about it that he and the mother duck will have stayed together since autumn last year. I also read that the ducklings, or young ducks as they are fast becoming, will stay with the mother duck for two years before they become independent, when winter comes she will guide them along the migration routes and help them find safe places and sources of food. They are slowly getting their feathers, but still have a lot of duckling-fluff which tends to get quite wet and bedraggled when they go underwater. I still find it the highpoint of my day to watch them dabbling and diving about in the wet. They have such an enthusiasm and energy – a kind of water magic – augmented by the tiny loveliness of the little perfect green leaves of the duckweed that float on the surface of the pond and swirl about on the clear swirls of water that the ducklings disturb with such wetness and wateriness.
The transparent, almost invisible, little fish in the shallow and hidden edges of the water have become even more elusive as they have grown larger and more visibly coloured. They are lovely little things actually and one of them looked up at me out of big black eyes ringed with turquoise-blue. The very big fish continues to intrigue us. I think it is a carp. It frequently swims about in the shallow water near the edge of another part of the pond and must be about 2 feet long. Perhaps it is also feasting on tadpoles. Quite often when it swims up it is accompanied by a slightly smaller and much darker fish which swims alongside it like a shadow. It is strange to think what prompts this close co-existence as to all appearances they belong to quite different species. On the other hand it could be an elaborate aquatic courtship or some other underwater ritual that only fish know or understand. I will probably have to do more research into the secret habits of fish..... the mystery may all be unravelled next week. I hope that this gloriously sunny weather continues until then!

Ducklings

The ducklings have grown from impossibly tiny bobs of fluff to duck-shaped creatures with fluffy feathers – half-grown but still captivating to watch as they dart about on the water-surface trying to learn how to be ducks. I have been watching for them every day as I go out on my daily walk. In the city there is a little haven of nature which somehow manages to thrive and remain wild. There are small fish and tadpoles in shallow edges of the pond, a ghostly grey heron, coots, moorhens, large fish, songbirds and an abundance of wild flowers.
One fateful day we (my husband and I,) watched as the mother duck defended her ducklings from crows, a seagull and a wading dog. There are five ducklings now, to start with she had eight or nine. After that series of sudden attacks she became very shy and secretive for a while. I think the dog particularly gave her a terribly bad fright. After patient searching we would always discover her hiding her young away in a hidden clump of reeds or grass on the edge of the extensive pond – it had become a kind of ritual for us to see them every day. Fortunately she has got over that,and also the ducklings have grown to a size where they are not so vulnerable anymore. These days they take frequent trips up the canal where they are fed a lot of bread by passers-by. Evening will always find them back on the pond, often they are accompanied by a drake – a mallard with glossy green head and striking plumage. I actually prefer the mother's plumage, duller maybe, but when you look closely, the pattern of golden-brown feathers is very rich – and she has such a motherly, pleasing look. I am not sure if the drake is the father or not, or even if it is the same one all the time, if he is a father, he certainly leaves the mother to do most of the rearing on her own. Such a lot has been happening because it is Spring-time and I have been meaning to get started on this blog for quite some time now. I have been taking quite a lot of photographs – my camera is not that good and I have no pretensions to being a professional photographer, still I would like to share my inadequate attempts to capture the beauty and mystery of what I see every day and will keep updating the slide-show on the right with new images. For now I am sure this is much too long already.