Moorhens building a brooding nest

Yesterday I popped in my local park and I watched three just hatched moorhen chicks with an adult. This pair of moorhens usually nests high in a willow tree, in the main fork of the trunk. I have seen one of the adults several times up the tree in the last few months, but I failed to find the nest. Today I went to the park again to check on the moorhens. I was surprised to find the female brooding the chicks on a new nest by the island (top shot), which wasn't there yesterday. The male was busy bringing her sticks and leaves. He would find a stick or leaf on the ground, run to the shore and swim as fast as he could to the nest and pass the material to her partner. The female was fluffed up and looked double the size of her partner. She was sheltering the young under her wings.
 If I hadn't seen the chicks yesterday I would have assumed the moorhens were nesting anew. Once the chicks leave the nest in the tree for the first time, presumably jumping to the ground or the water, they can't climb up the tree again. These adults are being very resourceful by building a second brooding nest for the chicks to shelter when they are still small and cannot thermoregulate properly.

One of the moorhens with chick yesterday.

The moorhen sits and the chicks get in to be brooded one after another. She pulled a few small twigs towards her as she was brooding them (photo from yesterday).

Male coming in with a stick.

A rotten leaf will do as nest material too.

Two nest hole snatchers

Some birds make nests from scratch, building them from twigs, branches, spider's webs, lichens or mud. Others need a hole to nest on, and they will use natural holes or those drilled by other birds. This post is about two such 'nest snatchers' I've watched recently. In the last few days, I've noticed starlings moving a lot of back and forth between an Ash and the grass lawns in my local park. Yesterday, they were actually using last year's Great Spotted Woodpecker's nest. Woodpeckers have a reputation for feeding on the chicks of hole nesting birds, but they also might be providing them with the nest hole in the first place.

A photo from last year (24th June), with a chick almost ready to fledge calling to its parent (on the right branch) 

Yesterday, a Starling getting in the hole

 The other nest snatching event happened just in front of my house. There's been an owl box in the Lime tree in front of the house for over 15 years. It was well used, the hooting and gurgling noises of the Tawny Owls from the nest very obvious in the night. A few years ago the bottom of the nest fell off, and the sky was visible from the ground. On Valentine's day the next year the owls called from the nest, probably inspecting it, but it was deemed useless and we stayed owl-less for a few years. This year, Stock Doves showed a lot of interest in the owl house (top shot taken 9th April). They stuffed the box with branches, and miraculously, the branches stayed, the box had been repaired!

The repaired nest, branches sticking out at the bottom.

 The booming call of the Stock Doves greeted me in the mornings as I left for work. Until one night we heard a Tawny Own hooting. The owl was actually sitting atop the nest, calling, then flew off low over the roofs. The owls have been calling regularly since, and I guess they have taken possession of the owl box and evicted the Stock Doves.
 

 Tawny Owl watching us from the nest box (20th April).

The moorhen nest up the tree

This afternoon I tried and photograph the moorhen's tree nest from a better angle. The nest is located about 4 m high, on a broken branch that is resting on the main fork of the willow. A moorhen was sitting tight on the nest, but only the top of the head and bill was visible (above).

 Its partner kept busy chasing away the visiting coot.

Why did the Moorhen and the Mallards go up a tree?

I occasionally see moorhens on trees. Today one climbed up a weeping willow, then fumbled in a fork that seemed to have a lot of branches in it, before almost right away climbing away on to a clear view of the water and gliding down. A nest? I didn't have a clear view of the moorhen climbing up, it's possible she was carrying nesting material and passing it to its partner? Tonight, I looked at the photos and, yes! you can just see a dark bird sitting on the tree fork. In other photos a bit of bill is visible. A tree nest!
 Then I thought, that's where they have been nesting these past years. The park's lake has little marginal vegetation and the island, which used to have bushes, is now bare as the goose use it for roosting. That explains why moorhen chicks appeared out of nowhere at some point in the year, even when, as last year, they appear to abandon their nest on the island's shore.

This photo shows the location of the nest, on the left hand side.

Preparation to jump onto the water.

I have never before seen a mallard up a tree. This morning, on the grey light of the solar eclipse, a pair of mallard were quite high on a tree. The duck was inspecting the trees, while the drake looked on, appearing quite unsure. They went to two different trees. Apparently, Mallards occasionally nest in hollow trees, their duckling jumping from the height after hatching just like other tree nesting ducks do.

The female is a meter over the drake.

The drake looks on.

So during this day of solar eclipse, I happened upon two birds I don't usually see on trees, doing just that. Not so much the eclipse than spring is in the air and the park doesn't offer the best ground nesting conditions for these birds.