Over the last few weeks I have been making a few trips to The Lough, one of my favourite birding areas in Cork City. I usually go there a lot during this time of year, given that the baby birds are being born. And I saw quite a lot of little birds, experiencing life for the first time. But I also saw something that was quite epic. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen birds fighting. I’ll repeat that, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen birds fighting!
About two weeks ago, I caught sight of my first baby birds in the Lough. Juvenile coots. Little bundles of joy with such fuzzy plumage. Little treasures!
As they grow older, they will become graceful fliers, soaring majestically in a clear blue sky. Except that won’t happen, because coots have short stumpy wings. They will avoid flying “properly” as much as they can, preferring to support themselves with their feet still touching the water as much as possible. I think I have only, perhaps once, seen a coot do anything that could unambiguously be called flying. So they’re not big on flying. They do seem to like diving a lot though.
A few days later, I saw my first goslings of the year. More wonder and more cuteness!
The next bird babies I would see would be the ducklings, however, my first ducking sighting of the year actually occurred in the Glen River Park a few days beforehand, where I saw five ducklings.
But I would get a much closer viewing of them in the Lough. The birds often come right up to you there, looking for food. In fact, I’ve often seen the greylags approach expectantly when they see a human carrying food that they intend to eat themselves! I’m actually ambivalent about this opportunity for people to get up close to the birds. It can be a wonderful opportunity for people, and if everyone behaved with respect for the birds, it’d be great. But, time and time again, I’ve seen small children chasing feral pigeons. There is nothing funny about chasing a defenseless animal. To be honest, I don’t really blame the children, they’re too young to know any better. It’s the parents who stand aside and do nothing while their child is frightening the pigeons who I have a problem with, or worse, the adults who join in on the frightening of the pigeons.
Adults. Deliberately frightening birds. If anyone thinks that’s okay, think about this. I’m taller than average. Everyone would instantly understand why it would be a problem if I suddenly ran towards another person who was shorter than me (and for that matter, someone my height or taller). But a huge human, running towards a tiny bird, and laughing when they fly away in terror, for some reason that’s considered totally okay.
But I mostly see things that are a bit more joyful and a bit more hopeful than adults deliberately upsetting the birds. I see people delighted to get some photos of birds flying over the lake. I see children who are overjoyed to feed the mallards and the pigeons. I would be delighted if I never again saw a child, but especially an adult, deliberately trying to frighten a defenseless bird again. But hopefully, places like the Lough provide a space for birds and humans to co-exist that hopefully does more good than bad.
So, back to the ducklings! To my surprise, I only saw two ducklings at the Lough when I was there yesterday. This is a very low number, especially when you consider that I saw a female mallard with twenty ducklings following her around last year. I wrote about that here:
Not all of the ducklings survived. And of the five little cygnets from last year, at least one of them died. Sadly this is not uncommon. Perhaps one of the cygnets or ducklings was taken by a bird that wanted to feeds its own young. Nature is beautiful, but sometimes it’s quite cruel. But hopefully, the two little ducklings I saw yesterday will be alright.
The photos don’t really convey how small they are. I could probably fit two, maybe three, of these little guys in one hand.
While yesterday, I mainly went to the Lough to see the baby birds, I got a photograph I have been trying to get for years. A clear photo of a mute swan flying. Animal photography is a strange thing. You go from, not having the photograph you have wanted for years, to having it, in a split second. It is such a source of joy! Here’s the photo.
It happened so fast. Mute swans taking off make a loud noise, indeed it sounds like they are an aircraft and you are hearing the loud sound of their engine. I got the camera ready really quickly, knowing there was just as much chance of getting a blurry mess, but this time, it all worked out!
Another thing I witnessed yesterday was, as the title of this post suggests, a lot of fighting. I don’t know was something in the air, or in the water, but, there was quite a lot of bird fighting going on! Now from the mute swans this is expected. The mute swans will throw down if another bird looks at them funny, or looks at them at all, or doesn’t look at them, or, exists. So that was expected. In fact, if I saw a mute swan that wasn’t engaged in the bird equivalent of fisticuffs, I’d be worried, I’d wonder is this mute swan okay? So that’s how it was yesterday, a mute swan would be quite content, then get really annoyed by the fact that other birds exist, and then pursue them.
Weirdly, given the reputation mute swans have for fighting, these confrontations didn’t really escalate. A swan would chase another swan, the other swan would retreat, and that would be the end of it. No, one of the worst culprits for the brawling yesterday were the woodpigeons. Woodpigeons? Didn’t see that one coming!
Eventually the two wood pigeons seemed to, just lose interest in fighting, and got back to doing other wood pigeon stuff.
So, I’d seen some brief skirmishes between mute swans, and I saw my first ever wood pigeon fight. A quite exciting day, and it would have been a great day even if I had left after the pigeon battle. But, more epicness lay ahead of me, because I was about to see, one of the most awesome bird fights I would ever see!
Yup, these two male mallards are fighting in mid air! They then landed in the water and continued fighting!
I do get a bit nervous if it’s a water battle between birds. Sometimes it looks as if one is holding the other’s head underwater, and I’m worried they’ll drown. Only time would tell how this battle would end.
And that was pretty much the end of it. The two mallards stopped fighting and went their separate ways. A battle for the ages that ceased as quickly and as unexpectedly as it commenced.
So that was my trip to the Lough yesterday. I knew it was going to be a good one, I knew I was going to see an abundance of bird babies. But I did not realize I was walking into a warzone, where Mad Max style chaos ruled the water. It was an interesting visit to one of my favourite parts of the city, and not one I’ll be forgetting any time soon.
Ponderings Of An Autist 