Coots

just a quick note today...we've been busy getting the boat back to house mode, and being as poor as church mice, staying in and being frugal. So no real site seeing or hanging out in the park at the beer and cider festival...just watching the birds and the snooker on the BBC, cleaning and cooking and laughing at each other. All very good things

We were so excited about having a nesting coot next door. We decided to turn the boat around so that instead of having to spy on the nest from our bedroom, we could watch them from our favourite spot, sitting in the well deck. Far enough away so as not to spook them and close enough to see all the action.

We'd seen Lady Cootly obsessively nest building and sitting on a clutch of about 6 eggs. Poor Mr Cootly spent his days bringing her ladyship nesting material and food...working his poor beak to the bone. She would call imperiously and he would come a swimming back with an offering. This went on for about a week. Then hurrah! Sounds of peeping and eggshell in the water! Dave and I were so pleased and watched the nest so carefully. But what's this? Only one hatchling to be seen...what had happened? Mother and father were so engrossed in the chick, feeding and preening, the little bald creature had only to open it's tiny beak to be fed and snuggled. We were sure that the other chicks would have been just as tenderly reared. Apparently not the case.

The RSPB has a marvelous website and is very informative when I want to identify a bird, or compare kinds of ducks and geese I see here at the marina. However when it comes to animal behaviour...not so much . So Google further afield...found two articles and a blog about coots.

Apparently when mother coot is egg heavy, if she is unhappy with her own nest, she will lay eggs in any other coot nest that she deems worthy. She will only lay in her nest when she thinks it's perfect. So...most coot nests contain between 6 and 9 eggs, of which only one or two might be hers. Now mother knows that she is harboring cuckoos but she'll sit on the eggs until they hatch, then one of two things will happen. Lady Cootly will either kill any chicks that she believes aren't hers, or she will starve the babies she believes are cuckoos. Lady and Mister killed their cuckoos rather than starving them...

Bastard baby killers I cry!!!
Nature heh!

The surviving chick is thriving and has a great deal of ugly charm. I am finding it difficult to be quite as enamored with the coot family as I had once been.