This week in Exploring Nature With Children is the ‘nesting birds’ week. Rose and I headed to our special nature spot, looking out for any nesting activity, and whilst we didn’t see any birds obviously nest building, we did spot existing nests.
Once we arrived at the park we saw lots of mating behaviour; male pigeons puffed up and strutting their stuff to impress the females, male mallards fighting with each other and chasing females. Two of the males chased each other ’round and ’round in the pond, snapping at each other’s tales. It was quite a drama!
Young Mallards
Rose with her pigeon friends
We also spotted this unusually marked fellow!
Isn’t he handsome!
The snowdrops are still thriving.
There was a glorious display of Daffodils.
We spotted beautiful lichen!
And Pansies!
I found this smashing interactive on the Mallard Lifecycle that you may be interested in taking a look at.
We didn’t work in our journals this week; we have been busy visiting my poorly Mother-in-law, and our walk fell on our 100th day of school, so we were focused somewhat on the fun activities surrounding that.
How was your walk this week? Do let me know in the comments or FaceBook group.
Happy exploring!
Hi Lynn
Love the flowers, all the birds are looking their best at the moment trying to attract attention. Your unusual duck is likely a hibrid between a wild mallard and a domestic escapee, there are quite a few around with different markings, apparantly in some areas there are hardly any wild type mallards around which is a worry.
I like the pages you linked to about mallards, thank you. Do you know if our own mallards over here are migratory? It certainly seems there are quite a few drakes around each duck and it was nice to see some work going into it. My daughter will enjoy it once she is feeling better ( off day today nothing serious).
We were back in the usual place this week, we also didn’t see any nest building but we did see and hear seven skylarks. We are going to make counts over the coming weeks and years to try to measure the population, indicated by the number of singing males. I have heard about it with nightingales hope it works with skylarks. A moorhen was mooching about the pond but no sign of a nest but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one as it is over hung by bushes in places. Last year there was a nest and two chicks. We had fun on the way home, there is an old fallen tree in the hedge and since the hedge has been cut we can investigate and we spent ages poking around, lots of woodlice ( different sorts too) centipedes and beetle pupa. Also saw some red dead nettle in flower and some milk thistle thinking about it.
I do hope your Mother in law is on the mend and that she can enjoy her mother’s day on Sunday. Hopefully the coming spring will bring some sunny days which make everyone feel better.
Best wishes
Jenny