Author: David

A lone lady’s smock flowering, half-hidden in long grass. Actually, there were a few others, none very close together, in the same patch of long grass.

I’d just about given up seeing any coot chicks that day (see yesterday’s post). There was no sign of the turtle at its sunbathing spot nearby, half an hour after it normally appeared. As I was getting ready to move on, the greylag geese with the recently hatched goslings started swimming across from the island to a stretch of the main shore which doesn’t have the footpath immediately adjacent.

The goslings climbed the bank, and started nibbling at the short grass. The parents stayed at the bank, looking round for any sign of danger. I went a little closer, to get a better view of the goslings. But I didn’t try to get particularly near, not wanting to spook the parents.

Close-ups of some of the blackthorns in the hedge around the Barley Field when they were flowering. There’s a lot of flowers crammed along the narrow branches. No wonder the trees look white from a distance in springtime.

Another visit to West Park, and another visit to the nest of the brooding coots, so see whether the eggs had hatched yet. At first it seemed not. Something was going on. Both birds were on the nest, doing things it was hard to make out, but staying longer than when there was a shift change in brooding duty [first four pictures].

I went a short distance to look at other things which were happening (more about this in the next few days). Ten minutes or so later, I came back to where I could see the coots’ nest. This time, the tuft of reddish feathers of a very young coot chick were visible. It isn’t very clear in the pictures, but there were at least two, and possibly three chicks. The parents were pushing something white out of the nest: fragments of the now redundant shells. Keeping half an eye on the nest for a while longer, nothing new happened.

Flowers on a sycamore. These were on a young tree, so I didn’t need to stretch up to get the pictures.

When these pictures were taken, the coot pair which got a head start with raising young this year were still brooding the eggs. Although they shared the duty of staying on the eggs, protecting them ank keeping them warm, there were also other duties.

Here, one of the birds is carrying some vegetation back to give to the one staying on the nest. I thought at the time it was bringing some food; there’s some fuss as the material was exchanged, a bit of pair bond reinforcement. In fact, that particular piece of vegetation was still visible on the nest some days later, even once the chicks had hatched.