It’s nice when your teenagers help you out with the chores isn’t it?
While walking past Yelverton pond a few days ago, we noticed a new clutch of Moorhens had hatched and was being looked after by the ‘teenage’ Moorhens from the previous bunch of eggs that hatched a few weeks ago.
It’s quite interesting behaviour and isn’t common in birds. We suppose that it takes a bit of responsibility and effort off the parents, and gives a bit of experience to the juvenile ones before they grow up and presumably try to raise their own in future years.
We’re privileged to see that behaviour in action on our pond so close to home.
After a previous post saying there were 3 juvenile birds, there now appear to be 2 left, after some evidence that one got run over by a car by the corner of the pond. A big shame as that generation were doing so well. The sight of 4 more chicks takes the edge off though, fingers crossed for those doing well.
On the same walk a couple of Linnets were fluttering around and singing on some bushes, we’ve not seen those very often at all in the Parish, even though they’re not rare nationally. They’ve got a beautiful song and look great with a grey head, brown wings, and a bit of red on their chest.
And last but definitely not least, here’s another thing you don’t see every day, there were a couple of Red Kites over Garrick Field flying off towards Poringland a week ago.
Indeed, over the same couple of days there were posts on Facebook by Poringland residents saying they’d seen them.
It’s spectacular to see these birds over the Parish, there are apparently only 1800 breeding pairs of Red Kites in the UK, with half of those in Wales. So having a pair in the area makes our Parish (and wider group of villages) seem even more special.
Alpington and Yelverton 