Wild life

There was a duck living in one of our lower pots (see above first photo…) she’d made a nest there and had been sitting there very quietly for a long, long time.  Well.  Yesterday they hatched- all nine of them. And then today (they waste no time) they all leapt off the boat- one by one, following mother duck.  Then they simply swam off and around the boat and made a little camp for themselves on the mud-bank.  I sat and watched them for ages, the baby chicks following mother duck around and being very cute. I noticed two were particularly pathetic, and one just kept rolling over in the mud- it couldn’t hack the cruel reality of the non-nest world.  And then it kept running under it’s mum and wriggling.  Eventually I had to stop watching them and get on with some work.  Next time I went out (some 70minutes later) the ducklings were 2 down, only 7 left.  So Pat and I scoured the banks to find the lost two but couldn’t, and eventually found one.  So Pat rescued him from the mud, as he had clearly been abandoned by his family and was looking very peeky.  And now he’s in a box surrounded by some earth and duck-down from the nest and with a small saucer of water next to him. (or her).  But all the little duckling does is shiver- so I’m not sure he/she’ll make it.  Maybe I should name it, then I don’t have to worry about the gender so much…. Cheepy- Peeky Cheepy.  (Although there’s not much cheeping going on at the moment).  Cheepy will need warmth, love, water and eventually worms.

Today we received gifts in clay-form!  Many, many pots and mugs and beautiful bowls with birds on them.  Mum made them all for us so that everything we have in the kitchen could  be BESPOKE!!! SO BESPOKE is our boat.  It’s like a ’boutique’ boat.  If it was an advertising agency it would be a ’boutique’ advertising agency, with a ‘holistic’ approach to tableware. Or maybe that doesn’t make sense.  Anyway, they are gorgeous.  Mum say’s “they are organic things, because they are not industrial looking, they are made by hand. They are chunky and delicate at the same time, with a hint of naivety.  Especially the bird bowls because they look chickens instead of birds”.  We are proud to have them.  She also adds “If anyone would like to buy some, I can make more!’

They didn’t think about how the baby coots would get back on to the boat once they’d fallen off.
We even built a ramp, but they probably didn’t understand what it was.
SO now, first baby was born on Saturday and was very active on Sunday when we fished him out of the water back to his mother’s wings. But hasn’t been seen since.
Trauma. Pat says he expects they’ll all die. This is not the summer I had planned. Animal death abounds.
We must save the coots! Train them to use that damned ramp! Educate the brutes!
TBC.

I’m catching up slightly here because a lot has happened in the past five weeks and we’ve only just created this outlet.

So, basically, about six weeks ago we woke up one morning to find a single egg poised on the back of the boat where there is a small ledge.

We laughed at the vain attempt by some canal inhabitant to pick this particular spot as its choice nesting ground.

When we returned home that day we saw that the egg remained in the same place only now a piece of rope (ours) had moved closer to the egg and alongside it had been placed a single leaf and short skinny twig.  Ah-ha!  We thought.  The birds are setting up camp.

Six weeks later and the hopeless egg/leaf/rope/twig set-up has transformed into an uber-nest made of the finest canal ingedients (more twigs, weeds, plastic bags and coconut hair).  Proud owners of this fine habitation are mr and mr coot and THIRTEEN new eggs.  Not including the first one.

Should be a lively summer.

I was sitting at my desk tapping on my laptop keyboard.  It was a sunny afternoon and there was a light breeze.  I thought: ‘how nice to be working on the boat’.  Then I heard some pitter-pattering and a dull clack from outside.  I carried on working.  ‘It’s probably just a friendly badger or somesuch out on a stroll’.  The wooden wind chimes jauntily jangling. ‘Ah! boat life’ I sighed.

Some time later out of the corner of my eye I spied light movement to the right of the boat (port side actually- but I was facing back to front).  Very quickly I registered a black and white pattern, something new to the pontoon.

It was then that a strange sensation came over me.  A slow realisation.  Back-tracking I remembered the clacking sound and an earlier memory of a rat-trap assembly on the side of the boat.  Peanut butter bait.  And then I risked a quick peek back to the unknown pattern that had caught my eye.

Yikes.  A gruesome dawning.  A badger- a skunk- something colourful, big, lumpy.  Not a rat.  No no no. Definitely not a rat.

I crept silently along the inside wall of the boat, a chance peek here and there. A long thin feather.  Shiney royal blue striped white.  Feathers.  A tropical bird!  GOOD LORD NO!

And there it was: the magpie.  Face down in the peanut butter, broken neck, wings akimbo.

I couldn’t leave the boat, what if it was still alive?  How would I rescue such a creature?  Could I resuscitate on such a small form?

So I waited til Pat came home.  Stupid greedy magpie.