Coot by the war memorial at Newmillerdam this morning.
At Newmillerdam most of the black-headed gulls now have their chocolate brown masks but they all seem remarkably laid back this morning with no noisy disputes. Soon they’ll be gathering at their nesting colony at St Aidan’s.
Another reason for it seeming so peaceful is that there are no Canada geese around. Last week I saw a flock of more than a hundred by the canal opposite the Strands and a similar flock on the Wyke.
By the outlet at Newmillerdam a lone coot was diving for freshwater mussels. In the few minutes as we passed by it apparently finished feeding on one and then dived for another. The mussel was the size of a small grape.
My Ode to a Duck animation is going to be a biodiversity hotspot: here are the latest recruits, the moorhen and coot. It’s surprising how these characters take on a life of their own: I’d never thought of a moorhen as being a bit of a spiv or of a coot being an ingenue.
Take a 90-second break with elegant gulls, dabbling coots, preening ducks and a hesitant pigeon on a quiet backwater near the Boathouse at Newmillerdam Country Park, Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
Drawn with my new Lamy nexx with the EF nib, in brown De Atramentis ink, watercolour added later, as Barbara rang me to say that she and her brother had had to abandon their usual circuit of the lake.
The best place for me to draw at Newmillerdam on this rainy morning is the Boathouse Cafe, sitting looking out of the 200-year old gothic mullioned window with a mug of latte.
Swallows swoop and glide low over the glowering grey surface of the lake. Thirty pink-footed geese – probably two or three families combined – progress sedately across the placid waters, making surprisingly little noise, considering how excitable geese can be.
There’s a family of coots with three youngsters, now almost adult size but in charcoal-and-white penguin-style livery, instead of the jet-black of the adults
On the coots’ nest by the outlet of the lake, an adult is sitting tight. This is a popular little nesting platform, now with it’s own mini-garden of herbage, and I think several families of coots must have been raised here over the last few months.
In the shallow film of water cascading over the top course of masonry of the outlet, mallards are dabbling. The lake has its backwaters, opaque and eau-de-nile today, but here there’s always a flow, so always the chance of some invertebrate or seed being washed down.
Two ducklings are swimming nearby. I’ve seen smaller ducklings stuck below the horse-shoe cataract of the outlet, unable to make the leap back up again, but these two seem just about old enough to escape the dangers.
11.15 a.m., 70℉, 21℃, storm cloud looking threatening to the west, but we escape the worst of it: The triple flower-heads of Yellow Flag Iris look complicated, but they work perfectly when a bumble bee lands on them. I assume that it would take one of the larger bees to trigger the mechanism and enter the flower, but a smaller bumble bee manages just as easily.
The coots’ nest near the war memorial has been neatly built up since last week and there are at least three chicks.
Back home, I draw some of the visitors to the bird feeders. In additions to the greenfinch, blackbird, starling, blue tit, robin, wood pigeon and house sparrow that I’ve sketched here, we had a male great spotted woodpecker coming to the feeders and a grey squirrel with a very undernourished tail.
Newmillerdam Lake, War Memorial, Monday, 24 May, 2021, 10.50 a.m., 63℉, 7℃, 80% cloud: A coot swims to the shore and immediately sees off two snoozing mallard drakes. It preens and pods about a bit then goes back to the lake.
Two pairs of pink-footed goose come ashore, each with a single gosling.
Two weeks ago I drew the coot on the nest by the outlet sitting on eggs, last week there were about eight chicks and this week the nest is empty, with no sign of any addled eggs left behind. Nearer the war memorial there’s a coot still sitting on its nest, no sign of chicks peeping out as we passed.
Newmillerdam, 10.55 a.m., 100% cloud, 7℃, 45℉, rain: Three mallard drakes are soon chased away by the second, non-brooding bird, which soon returns to feed the chicks. Unfortunately the nest platform is festooned with soggy white bread but the young are also getting natural food as the second bird dives nearby, which is more popular than the gloopy, soggy bread.
From 10 or 12 feet away, I can’t see the flanges that are already starting to develop along the toes of the coot chicks’ feet. Three of the chicks are noticeably larger than the others and already coming out for a brief swim around the nest. The smaller chicks stay under the brooding bird.
When it comes on to rain all the chicks somehow find room in the nest, one of them just poking its head out from the shelter of ‘mum’s’ (I’m guessing it’s mum) wing and getting fed when the other adult swims in with the odd morsel of food. I can’t tell what the food is but one bit looked a bit wispy as if it was waterweed.
Lake outlet, Newmillerdam, 10.15 a.m.: The sitting coot gets increasingly alarmed as the drake mallard gets nearer, dabbling around the nest. The coot’s repeated, scalding notes get more frantic until its mate swims over briefly to check things out, but the mallard soon moves on.
Back to the business of incubating, the coot keeps changing position and I get a glimpse of 8-10 greenish brownish eggs.
Its mate returns and presents the sitting bird with a spindly pencil-length twig sprouting fresh green leaves. This is accepted by the bird on the nest (I’m not saying ‘the female’ because I can’t tell the difference between the two birds) and incorporated into the car tyre-sized platform.
Bluebell leaves are emerging in the mixed woodland on the slopes above the boathouse at Newmillerdam Country Park but there’s no sign of a herb layer in this conifer plantation above Lawns Dike. These appear to be Corsican Pines, a fast-growing variety of the Black Pine, Pinus nigra var. corsicana, which was a popular choice for forestry in the 1970s, when these were planted.
The wintering wildfowl that we’ve been used to seeing have dispersed and we see just a pair of goosanders standing on the causeway amongst the black-headed gulls with a second red-headed female on the water nearby. Considering that we must now be well into the breeding season, the mallards are looking relaxed this morning.
You can tell that I took this photograph in an area popular with walkers because the coots have incorporated a walking pole into their nesting platform, here by the dam head at Newmillerdam Country Park.
The juvenile coot in the foreground hasn’t yet developed the bulging forehead of its parents, nor has the colour in its legs begun to show.
But its flanged feet match the adults in size; ideal for trotting over mud and floating vegetation and almost as useful for swimming.
