Nesting season

Just around the corner from our house, on someone's front lawn, a pair of spur wing plovers have decided to build a nest. The home owners have carefully fenced off the nest area with a little wooden frame while the mother bird is sitting on them. A father bird hangs around protectively nearby.

This is really interesting to observe as we drive past in the car, usually at least a couple of times every day. Over the weekend the people who live in the house mowed the lawn all around the edge of the frame leaving the nest undisturbed. Sometimes I've driven past and seen the mother bird standing up near the nest, and I counted at least two eggs.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when the eggs hatch. My prior knowledge and experience of these birds is that they would nest on the large expanse of oval at my primary school and then become highly protective of their young and highly aggressive towards anyone who was unfortunate enough to get too close to them.

So I'm not sure I would want to actually be living in the house when the chicks hatch out of the eggs. Regular drive pasts will probably be a far safer option.

And while I'm on the subject of nesting, our ducks are making a comeback. We are now chasing one, sometimes two, adult ducks out of the pool again. I think it's only a matter of time before we're calling the wildlife carers to take the next bunch of ducklings away.