I am now the kind of person who thinks a lot about birds and their mating season.
It’s spring and therefore I guess it is the time of year where the life on top of the river start collecting sticks and nesting.
I had never really paid it much mind before but when you could only go out for an hour a day you took the small joys where you could and so I took notice of the ducks, swans and geese when they started to create theoir offspring. I also then learned that drakes fuck off once their offspring have been birthed and leave the hens to do the rest of the work.
I also didn’t really pay much attention to when the nests started being made and so there comes a time every year since 2020 when all of a sudden I’m like wait, shouldn’t I be seeing more nests by now? (I am aware that I could Google this, but I fear that if I know when it’s supposed to happen I will then freak out when it doesn’t, this way I am just watching nature do whatever the hell it wants).
I’m sitting in that period of time now. I feel like I should be seeing more nests. So far one set of geese has had some chicks (didn’t see their nest though) and then two sets of moorhens have got some chicks paddling along. But that’s it.
Here is what I have really been thinking about though.
The swans.
There are two sets of swans on the river near where I live. They are different ends of the river, but they are both usually there. Except the kind of disappeared for a while and I found myself low key panicking about them with every river walk I went on that didnt’t include a sighting.
Then suddenly they were back. And there was a nest and sticks were being dragged along to add to it by one swan while the other tried to fend off any other ducks that got too close. On the next visit to the river a swan was firmly nestled in the nest.
Which means soon there will be signets forming a long line between two white swans and I don’t know, something about that image makes me feel good. Seeing the signets grow and lose their grey feathers slowly before they then disappear is a great way to mark time in the spring/summer months and I’m glad that it appears to be on the horizon
Related to this, apparently geese mate for life and get depressed if they are separated from their mate. Which I did not know and made me kind of sad, but then also a tad confused because there are a lot of geese around where I live and none of them seem to be working on expanding their population.
Also, I learned this fact from Savor It - Tarah DeWitt, which isn’t out until May 21st, but it should be on your summer reading list. (affiliate link)