Ducks and Coots on the Kennet

For the past couple of weeks there has been a female mallard with 4 chicks living in the reeds near the mouth of Gunter's Brook.  Quite a few times as I have been walking home in the evening there has been a group of people stood looking at them.

This evening I think the first of the coots eggs are starting to hatch out.  As I walked over the bridge at the mouth of Gunter's Brook I stopped to look at the coot nesting there.  There was a distinct peeping sound coming from underneath her and she seemed to have her wings slightly more spread out than usual.  I think that at least one of her 9 eggs has already hatched.

Mallard Chicks on the Kennet

Today Zoe and I saw a female mallard with 4 small chicks on the Kennet just downstream from the Queen's Road car park.  We checked out the various coot nests but none of their eggs had hatched yet.  The same was true for the swan's nest near HomeBase.

Coots Again

On Tuesday evening I was walking alongside the Kennet, on my way home.  The coot on the nest at the mouth of Gunter's Brook was standing up and I counted 9 pale yellow eggs beneath it.

Chiffchaffs

On Monday, while we were in the Reading University grounds, Zoe and I heard our first chiffchaff of the spring.  On Wednesday morning I heard another at Farnborough North on my way to work.  This morning I heard it again, and a little later, in the woods, I saw a bird that looked like a chiffchaff but which was singing a melodious song that wasn't the repetitive two-note 'chiff-'chaff-chiff-chaff'.

Coots on the Kennet

For the past few weeks the coots on the River Kennet have been building the piles of sticks in the river that form their nests. In particular  the coot nesting under the footbridge over Gunter's Brook (near the Queen's Road multi-story car park) has been sitting on its nest every time I have walked past in the last week, and my guess is that it is already sitting on eggs which will hatch out soon.

This morning I noticed a particularly large pile of sticks, with a swan asleep on it, in the Kennet branch near Home Base.  A coot carefully climbed up the side of the nest, presumably with the intention of stealing some sticks for its own nest, but the swan woke, poked its beak at the coot, and the latter retreated back into the water.