I see lots of water birds come and go, some stay to feed, some just fly over, some are solitary, some come in pairs and some in flocks, there are waders and divers, large and small, some are frequent visitors, some are not, I don't know where they come from and I don't know where there go to, but I'm always happy to see them. This brings me to the Cormorant; I believed them to be a rarity in these parts, as I'd only seen one or two, and then one day I walked round the corner, to the rear of my house, and there they were, twenty or thirty, lined up on the railings of a boatyard pier on Southampton Water!
I don't see many pigeons, but there are a few, they clatter about in the trees and occasionally perch on my pergola, but generally they keep their distance, so it was surprising to find a pigeon egg nestling in a large pot of bamboo on my balcony. I hadn't heard anything, I hadn't seen anything, but there it was, early one morning, a single pigeon egg, and it certainly hadn't been there the night before. The curious thing is that there were no pigeons to be seen, before or since, just a solitary abandoned egg. Birds are very mysterious....
The picture at the top shows a Cormorant drying its wings and perched on an old pier stump (to the front of my house) on Southampton Water, at Hythe, Hampshire on Tuesday 25th June 2013 at 15:38.
The picture at the bottom shows the pigeon egg (41x29mm) in the pot of bamboo on my balcony in Hythe, Hampshire at 08:44 on Sunday 26th May 2013.
To read about Cormorants, click on the link below:-
To read about Woodpigeons, click on the link below:-
