Moorhens

It's been a miserable year for a lot of wildlife but the moorhens are having a good year - so far. A brood of six chicks has been born recently and at lease five or six juveniles seem to have made it through from earlier broods so there is quite a throng of them at the moment. As they are the most entertaining birds I know it is gratifying to see so many. All three generations were on the lawn today with five juveniles and most of the chicks plus an adult. The adult was showing them all how to steal potatoes from the vegetable patch so I went out and dug up the remaining ones and they had to content themselves with eating whatever it was I had uncovered. There has also been a new single duckling but it is keeping a fairly low profile. The picture shows one adult four juveniles and three chicks on the lawn.

Waxcaps on the lawn

Having left the lawn uncut for a couple of weeks during which a lot of rain fell I came back from holiday to find the lawn covered in waxcaps, one of the blackening species. From my fungi book I would have said it was Hygrocybe tristis or Hygrocybe conica var tristis as some sources have it

but the whole taxonomy of waxcaps seems a difficult area so I am not sure.

Butterflies

Is has been a terrible year for butterflies although there were unusually large numbers of Orange Tips earlier in the year (mostly before the rain started). Today it warmed up a bit despite it being damp and there were five species trying to make the most of a day when it wasn't too wet or windy. Pictured here is a Comma (one of several on the wing) and I also saw Meadow Browns, Ringlets, a Red Admiral and a Large? White.

Moorhens

After a slow start to the breeding season there are at least five moorhen chicks being raised on the moat. All five were on the front lawn today under the care of two adults and a juvenile. At one point when there was one adult and three chicks two magpies landed presumably to snatch a chick or two. The adult stood on no ceremony but charged, beak outstretched, at the nearest magpie, who, despite his size advantage cleared out pretty quickly. I went out and ensured both magpies were gone. The picture below is of three of the chicks waiting on a rush.

Even more ducklings...

We are now up to just over 40 ducklings with a further 12 born a few days ago. We shall see if these stay around or not - so far we have not this year had new ducklings around for more than a few days after hatching. However water moat levels are almost back to normal after the exceptional rain we have had in the last couple of months so maybe that will help.

More ducklings

A third set of ducklings for this year have been born in the last couple of days. Neither of the first two broods stayed around but with more water in the moat I'm hoping these will do. Thirteen this time means about 30 for the year so far - still well short of the 50+ recorded a few years ago.

First ducklings of 2012

Just a couple of days after the first moorhen chicks were hatched we had our first ducklings. I was looking for the moorhen chicks when an oddly coloured one appeared and it took me a few seconds to realise it was in fact a single duckling with no sign of adults or other chicks. A couple of hours later I spotted the whole brood who had now hatched although I didn't get a precise count. There were certainly at least half a dozen. Later however the crows and some sparrowhawks seemed to be taking a lot of interest and it's possible she lost a few. Whatever the reason she seems to have decamped with them to somewhere else as I haven't seen them around in the last day or so. I am sure there will be further broods to come. The good news is we have had some proper rain today at last. Let's hope this weather continues for a while until the moat is back to its proper water levels.