Meanwhile

[shermarama]

There are some coots down on the canal. They have built (and keep on building, it's getting ever more massive, even though the eggs have been in it a week already) a nest which is a curious mixture of natural materials and any vaguely linear rubbish they can get their beaks on, lately including a bunch of bright yellow braided-parcel-band stuff. The enclosure they've built it on the floating-log edge of is full of plastic bags and takeaway boxes and empty bottles and all sorts of shite. I can't work out if this is a miracle of adaptability or just coots being really stupid. Will the cootlets make it through without getting into a deathly tangle with a plastic bag, or overdosing on nibbled styrofoam? Watch this space...

Comments

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

they're just spectacularly dim. i find them rather endearing. and they're not as nervy as moorhens, who i suspect are even more dim. and they have toes like leaves and heads like small dinosaurs. ones near us seem to hang out in the corner of the dock that's constantly covered in a film of rogue diesel/petrol. p'raps they like the smell.

[zotz]

There are cormorants around Lambeth Bridge, but I don't have a photo of them. Yet, at least.

[shermarama]

I love the toes, they look so out of place, as if they've been grafted on from some completely different branch of the natural world by mistake.

[shermarama]

I've seen some cormorants around my way too. According to the book I looked them up in, they shouldn't be this far inland, so I don't know what's going on there..

[zotz]

Apparently they can live around fresh water. I saw a map the other day which had them living over nearly all of Britain apart from the Highlands.