Wolves Wild

A pair of shelducks taking their ease on sparsely vegetated shingle on the Rye Harbour nature Reserve. One appeared to be asleep, the other awake and alert.

The main access road into the Rye harbour Nature Reserve, busy with birdwatchers and other nature lovers, lots of dog walkers, and even the odd vehicle going to or from the reserve visitor centre. None of this traffic stopped a common pill woodlouse from making its way, with a few random changes of direction, from one grassy verge to the other.

A well-grown moorhen chick in West Park grooms its feathers. As it stands preening then stalks off, its feet look, at least to me, as out of proportion to the rest of its body.

A box bug on a leaf. Another new species to me, although the field guides say they are quite common.

On West Park lake, one coot feeds another. I’m not sure why.

It could be an adult feeding one of its chicks. Coots are big on parental care. Both parents feed the chicks even when they have grown enough to forage for themselves. But surely not once the chicks have grown up enough to adopt adult plumage. The one being fed is somewhat smaller than the other bird, so might still be on of this year’s hatchlings.

Alternatively, this might be a pair of adults which were just beginning the process which might lead to trying to raise a brood: feeding as part of a courtship process. It was a bit late in the year for that, but perhaps not quite too late if, for example, this was a pair which had lost all the chicks from an attempt earlier this year. Coot chicks do suffer a heavy attrition rate, despite all the efforts of parental care.

A summer mushroom growing on wood chip mulch under bushes in West Park. I suspect my limited identification skills would not have been up to working out its species even with pristine specimens, still less in the state it was in.