Moorhen

I’ve been watching a pair of moorhens for about a month now. I presume they are nesting and think that I know where the nest is but I haven’t wanted to get so close that I spook them as they could be laying now, that is, as I write this in mid-March, they might lay their 6 eggs or so from then to until mid-May and incubate them for about 3 weeks.

Moorhens are a wetland bird of, as the name would suggest, places such as moors, marshes, rivers and canals, the adults are black / brown with a flash of white both under the tail and along its sides. They have yellowish green feet and a red beak that rises up to a shield on the front of their head, as they are obviously fashionable birds that care about their appearance they decided to accessorize their feet with a yellow tip to their beaks and add a red ring to the top of their legs. More from the house of Primark than Chanel perhaps? To be fair, such an awkward looking bird can’t be easy to dress. Didn’t someone say that about… Oh never mind. 

They are similar to a coot if you’re familiar with them, which is basically the white beaked colour way. Moorhens are a little smaller than the coot at about 30cm / 1ft long. They are in fact in the same family - Rallidae (rail), along with, well, rails, and crakes.

Having been brought up messing about on the river Thames and then living on a narrowboat for nigh on 20 years, I’ve seen a few moorhens, in fact I had a moorhen that used to come and peck at my window in the morning, he became known as Roger Moorhen. It never ceases to make me chuckle at the chick's disproportionate size feet. They are non-webbed and sit on the end of this black ball of fluff like a full sized chicken foot. The chicks are precocial, that is, they are born with their eyes open and able to feed themselves and move independently almost immediately, like a horse, but you can’t ride a moorhen.. 

The chicks fledge after about a month and a half and are fully independent after 2 or 3 months, often going on to raise their own brood in the following spring.

Watching these birds got me to thinking though, do they stay together or have they paired up this year?

Moorhens are semi-monogamous and may form pair bonds for several years. In moorhens this is primarily facilitated by returning to the breeding ground (site fidelity) and then locating each other with calls. If this is the case then this pair may be in their first year of breeding at this site and continue to visit for many years to come. That being said, over the last few days I’ve only been able to see one, which means one of two things, either one has been taken by a fox or other predator, which is not impossible as they tend to ground nest in scrub, or they have laid already and they are taking turns to sit on the nest. Until I can tell them apart, as males and females are identical, I’m none the wiser.

Wait.. false alarm, the other one’s back!

More-hen news to come later…

Andy.

Image: Countryfile