Although you might not realise it from the weather, it’s late Spring, almost Summer. That makes it time for all of the new life that is entering our world to make itself seen. It’s also that time when parent creatures are driven frantic by the need to deliver food to growing families. The parents of this pair of little grebe chicks were in constant motion, finding insects and even small fish to feed to their pair.
The effort involved in raising chicks can be immense. Many animal parents achieve in just a few short weeks what humans spend years doing, taking their young from birth or hatching to leading completely independent lives.
A single bluetit chick can eat 100 caterpillars a day, and brood sizes of 12 eggs are not unusual. Multiply that up and you realise that Spring is also a time of unprecedented death, as birds take the young of insects, and bigger birds take the young of smaller ones, and so-on. It’s perhaps the most grisly time of year, yet we rightly choose to focus on what it is: the time when we welcome a surge of new life into the world.
Some of that new life makes me happy just to see it. Young goslings, looking like cotton-wool balls dyed a pale green, win my award for the cutest and most adorable babies. This was one of several I saw this weekend, although what was striking was the impact of the weather, with a gap in the ages of goslings between different families. Those that hatched before the recent cold spell were joined by others hatched after it.
But as everyone knows, new parents always think their children are utterly adorable, even if they’re… well… not. I suspect only a mother moorhen could love this bundle of fun, which I also saw:
moorhen chickBut here’s the thing. We’re losing so much of our wildlife that we should celebrate every arrival. Even those that only their mothers can love.
