Sunday, June 15, 2008

Coots Revisited

Coot family on floating garbage revisited..
I have checked the floating coot nest in the canal passing under our REC building close to Halverstad bridge..

To my luck, it was the time where mother and father exchanged roles for food-finding to laying-on-the-nest. Therefore, I had the chance to see their chick again (the mother or father always lay on top of it. That's why my previous attempts were unsuccessful). It is bigger now compared to previous size.

And very surprisingly, there were 3-4 more eggs on the nest! That's weird. They already have one chick of 3-4 weeks old. Did the mother make new eggs again? Probably this is the case; there was no egg on the nest. Let's wait and see..

I managed to take a video with my mobile during the exchange event; but its resolution is so low that it is impossible to see how they exchange..

We were at "Coot Day-Care Centre" at Gaasperplas
Alfonso and I have cycled to Kruitberg (literal meaning: {gun}powder mountain) yesterday. This was my longest cycling experience. Routeplanner showed the cycling distance as 8 km. However, we have made a wrong turn somewhere on the way. I guess it was at least 9 km. It took about 1 hour to arrive at Maikel's place at 5 PM.

He cooked zucchini soup: very tasty!. I will ask for the exact recipe. The other dish was risotto with salmon and smoked trout. Again, a nice and interesting dish. I learned that risotto was an italian rice type with more round shape, and a higher capacity to absorb water.

We had a walk to the lake at Gaasperplas after the dinner in Maikel's place. He took us to the park, and we saw a lot of rabbits around in the park! Their sudden movements were very funny. This was the first time I saw rabbits in natural life.
Then we walked to the lake. There was one mature coot feeding three other younger coots. Then another mature coot with a younger coot appeared, and it started to help feeding all younger coots. Maikel said that probably this was a coot day-care centre. The mothers are at work, left their young kids to here, he joked. He added that probably the two mature coots are paid by government. I said "then these coots adapted themselves to the dutch system".Yet another interesting coot nest
This morning, while cycling to university through Mauritskade, I saw this coot laying on a nest on the wheel in the middle of the canal.

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