counting coots: Something for the weekend

Something for the weekend

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Nest two update.

Unsurprisingly, nest two is in the process of failing. The way it normally works is this. The Coots build a nest that is higher than the normal river level, but lower than the high tide level. When the high tide comes along, the bird starts to float and the eggs start to move around in the nest cup. There is then much frantic nest material insertion and egg moving. The river is quite fast flowing when the tide is coming in and the eggs get dislodged from the nest completely by a combination of the above and get washed away. Occasionally they get caught up in the base of the nest structure.

Like this.

An egg doing dislodged.

This was taken on Tuesday. It is now Thursday (the observant amongst you will know this already), I didn't have a look on Wednesday (but did pick up a couple of late Teal - nice) and nor will I get over there today. With the long weekend upon us I am unlikely to get to the nest site before Tuesday next week. In that time I expect that nest two will have failed, been abandoned and the rebuild will have begun to create nest three. Egg laying for this nest is fairly likely to be next week. Maybe they will put some height in the next one. Maybe they won't. In the meantime, have a picture of a nest material handover situation. You may or may not find this 'touching'. I don't.

Happy days.