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.

Red Kites near Pangbourne

This afternoon I travelled from Reading to Oxford on the train.  Just before we passed through Pangbourne I saw some largish birds soaring over the grassy hills to the north.  Though they were too far away to identify properly, they looked like red kites (Milvus milvus).

Red kites have been reintroduced into the Chiltern Hills and are apparently quite common in that area now.  Some good pictures of them can be found at Gerry Whitlow's web-site.

Early in 2004, Zoe and I were also on a train to Oxford when we saw three red kites quite close up.  They were flying together over a field beside the railway track and their characteristic forked tails were clearly visible to us.  One of them even made as if to attack one of the others by flying underneath it, turning upside-down with raised claws, and then dropping away at the last moment.