Signs of Spring on the Lakes

When Zoe and I went for our walk around the lakes last Sunday morning, things were much quieter then they had been only a week or two earlier.  Sadly for Zoe, the muscovy duck was nowhere to be seen.  Also, the female of the old pair of Egyptian geese was missing, but maybe she was just hiding away somwhere sitting on a clutch of eggs. The male didn't seem particularly distressed.  The mandarin ducks were also acting differently: instead of swimming around under the bushes, the males were in a group on the bank squabbling, presumably over females.   Of the 20-30 shoveler ducks that were on the lakes in December, only 3 pairs were left, each pair consisting of one male and one female circling each other with beaks submerged.  On my way to work on Monday morning I noticed 3 pairs of shovelers on the lake near Frimley; they were still there this afternoon as I walked back to catch the train home.  It looks as if the large densely packed roating groups we saw in December were not just for feeding, they must also be where the males and females chose their mates before dispersing as couples to other lakes in the area.

Mallard Chicks in Oxford

I was in Oxford again today.  As I was striding along Hythe Bridge Street, I glanced over the bridge to have a look at the canal.  In the foliage on the bank next to Upper Fisher Row was a pale female mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) with at least two tiny chicks.  I stopped and watched them as they moved in and out of the broad-leaved water plants (irises?).  Lots of people hurried by me as I was stood there, but none stopped to look.

I am not sure that this is the earliest I have seen chicks, but February the 4th does seem unusually early.  If I remember correctly, a mallard on the Reading University Lakes had 16 chicks in February a few years ago, but they subsequently all died when a cold spell came along in March.   However, the short-term future of the Oxford chicks looks good: the -5 degrees C forecast for Sunday night has now been revised upwards to 0 degrees C.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck

In March 1940, writer John Steinbeck set out with marine biologist Ed Ricketts, two seamen and an engineer on a expedition to collect marine animals in the Gulf of California.  This book was written by Steinbeck using the log and field notes of Ricketts as a base.  It is a wonderful scientific tale, similar to Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, and Rachel Carson's Edge of the Sea, but with interludes in which Steinbeck recounts the thoughts, discussions, and experiences of the crew.  Sometimes Steinbeck falls into speculative biological philosophy.  Parts of this are rather dated, for instance, by being based on over-stretched analogies between biological systems and society, or by using the pre-Hamiltonian idea of  evolution being for 'the good of the species'.   In spite of these few short-comings, I really enjoyed this book, and looked forward to reading it on the train each day. Now I have finished it, I miss my little dose of the sunny Sea of Cortez,  with all its colorful inhabitants, to lighten these gloomy January mornings.

Ducks, Geese and Zoe

Last spring and summer, Liz took Zoe to see the ducks and geese on the Reading University lakes almost every day after school.  Zoe came to recognise some individual birds and even gave names to the various Egyptian geese there.  Well, last Sunday afternoon, on two occasions I saw clear evidence that some of the birds, at least, also recognise Zoe. 

On the north side of the big lake we came across the muscovy duck.  It was looking rather subdued and was hiding under some overhanging branches.  Then it saw Zoe and determinedly waddled out from the water and onto the path where it persistently fussed around Zoe, going around and in between her legs, all the time looking up asking to be fed.  This bird must have been domesticated - it treated Zoe as it would have treated its owner who had come to feed it.  The duck was so absorbed in what it was doing that it even failed to notice two dogs that walked by (not on leads) only a few feet away.  Zoe eventually got out some bread and fed it but even then we had to lay a trail of bread back to the water in order to stop it from following us.

Later, on the other side of the lake near the island we stopped for a moment and Zoe got her plastic bag of bread to feed some mallards.  I noticed the two old Egyptian geese (the ones Zoe calls Rosie and Sam) over on the north side.  They were picking up food that someone was throwing down when, suddenly, they took to the air and flew together out over the lake. Egyptian geese in flight are fairly impressive with their white-barred wings flapping noisily, and everyone turned round and watched them as they did a full circuit of the lake and then came down to land on the grass - right next to Zoe!  They then hurried over to beg food off her.

Cormorant on the Kennet

On Friday afternoon I got my first reasonably close-up view of a cormorant.  I was hurrying along the towpath beside Reading prison (yes, I know its actually just a remand centre now) when a large black bird popped up from under the water only about 5 metres from me.  I stopped, leaned against the railings and  watched it while it dived and resurfaced several times, apparently without catching anything.  Then it flew off eastwards along the river. 

As it was rather small for a cormorant and had a tuft of feathers on the back of its head, it occurred to me that it might be a shag.  However, the latter tend not to come inland in the way that cormorants do and, also, their tufts are on the top of their heads, not at the back.