A collection of the avian funny ha-ha and the funny peculiar.
There is nothing more fascinating for this bird lover than watching what these creatures make of the world filled with human junk. They take our food, scraps and nuts from tables and off the ground to survive. They acquire materials to nest with that have been thrown away in idle haste. And they can also just be plain mischievous. Take this crow on the John’s Lane path next to rattlechain.
Hello
A few bricks to pick up and rearrange.
And how about a “no entry sign” to tidy up.
Coots are particularly good at collecting piles of rubbish to build nests. They also like to rest on debris in the water.
The survivors
Men at work, coots at rest
By far the most dangerous of wild birds to handle, in the UK at least is the grey heron. I have had a couple of encounters. It is like a pair of scissors coming at your eyes, supposedly because they strike at the shiniest thing that they see. They make good use of the large pincers. I saw one once swallow a live rat whole. Most of the time it is fish. A knife and fork would be easier.
And of course I have a particular interest in swans. I have never seen one “mate for life”, “break a person’s arm”, or “pine to death” when their mate dies. THESE ARE ALL URBAN MYTHS. What I have directly observed are female swans swapping mates to hold onto their nesting territory when a stronger male comes along. And the level of incest amongst “pairs” which consist of sons and mothers, fathers and daughters and siblings make the Quakers family trees look uncomplicated. The male swan below was well known in the area for building two nests. One for his “wife” and another one for one of his previous “daughters.” Both bred that particular year leading to an uneasy squabbling between the two females before an ordered collective was established.
I have also seen the result of two pairs of swans coming together. One pair had 4 cygnets, the other 8. On one visit to the canal in question, I saw the pair with 8 had suddenly appeared to have lost them all. Carrying on further imagine the surprise when all 12 cygnets were with the other pair! The 8 were slightly bigger than the existing 4 as they were slightly older but it was quite apparent that the adults could not count, and they went on to rear them all as their own. These type of observations don’t appear in the official documentaries or published research, but they are real observations.
One bizarre thing that is true is how territorial swans are in relation to other wildfowl. Despite lovingly tending to their young, letting them ride on their backs and teaching them to fly, come the new spring or even before they turn on them with an effortless flick of a switch.
It’s usually males that do the attacking, but in this case the female was particularly being the more agressive- perhaps indicating that the cygnet in question was another female she saw as a threat.
Mrs Vicious Bastard sticks the boot in.
This male swan is convinced that a love rival is starring back at him from inside a parallel world on the other side of the building.
For hours he will look at himself in the glass biting his own reflection which also “bites back.”
“I thought one male was bad enough.”
During times of hardship in Winter, all the birds come together in a huddle in the available unfrozen water. But sometimes it helps to get a ride from a bigger bird.
“Next stop please.”