Down by the Pool

I don't go as often as I should to our local nature reserve, Llyn Coed y Dinas, particularly since it's only a short way along the road from here. Anyway, I was down that way this morning, so I thought I'd look in. The lake was formed as a consequence of the building some years ago of the Welshpool Bypass, and has been landscaped and adapted to make a very attractive space for nature. It's much quieter now than earlier in the season, because the many pairs of black-headed gulls which breed there have by now moved on; but there is still plenty to see.

On the island just in front of the hide there were a dozen or so lapwing. A female teal was dabbling nearby. There were great crested grebe on the lake, two or perhaps three adults, and two young birds, one of which was eagerly begging for food from one of the adult birds. Coots, moorhens, mallard and the inevitable Canada geese were there in good numbers, as always, and the resident population of tufted ducks were quite skittish, flying about here and there and much less sedentary than usual. Sand and house martins were flying over the water, and a sandpiper was calling from somewhere, though I couldn't see it. Cormorants were about as always, and a pied wagtail was prospecting the shoreline.

Many of the birds visible were, I suppose, this year's young, hence some of the skittish behaviour I saw. The young grebes were very much in juvenile costume, with their distinctive stripey heads, but clearly already expert divers and swimmers. A gang of jackdaws appeared, and I think these will have been young birds; they set on a passing lapwing, and pursued in avidly all over the lake, with the lapwing ducking and diving in an attempt to escape - or, perhaps, just entering in the fun of the thing. For it seemed no malice was intended. At last the lapwing came down on a nearby islet, and the jackdaws flew off. Later, another lapwing, or maybe even the same one, decided to  dive-bomb one of the tufted ducks, and the wagtail also got chased a bit. Birds use play to acquire and hone the flight skills they will need.

While I was watching all this, the one still and unconcerned presence was a grey heron, perched on a rock not far away and clearly just mooching, shoulders hunched and totally ignoring everything around him. That is, until another heron drifted down from the large oak on the big island, with the intention of doing a bit of fishing on the far side of the lake. This was clearly an infringement of sovereign territory; the mooching heron took to the air, was over there like a shot, to drive the interloper all round the lake. Another heron had been skulking in the reeds at the very furthest end of the lake from me, and that bird took off as well, so that for a short time there were three birds in the air all at once, with an array of harsh cries. The third bird soon settled again, out of my sight, but the intruder was pursued for nearly a complete circuit of the lake before lifting over the trees and, presumably, into a nearby field, whereupon the incumbent bird landed back near to "his" rock, hopped onto it, hunched his shoulders and became once again semi-comatose.

All of this in no more than twenty minutes or so break between one shopping tour and the next. As I began by saying, I really ought to get there more often.