birding-aus

Water Hen Goes Nutty!

To: "'birding aus'" <>, "Andrew Thelander" <>
Subject: Water Hen Goes Nutty!
From: "bob moffatt" <>
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2009 12:18:22 +1000
I have been monitoring this nest - they are Purple Swamphens, they (both a male and female) commenced incubating nuts pre 8th Jan and are still sitting!! I have more photos and considering writing a short note for publication, the nest is certainly not the typical Swamphen nest of reed stem sections but rather a bowl in somewhat rank grass - that has since been mowed (slasher raised to avoid slashing nest!). I suspect they may have lost a clutch of eggs(??) and the nuts are substitutes (?). I dont know whether they gathered the nuts or whether the nuts may have accumulated in a depression which may then have enticed them to incubate(?).

There is a recent report of Black swans incubation glass bottles (see Aus Field Ornithology Vol.23 No1. March 2006).

Bob Moffatt
There was an article in a recent



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