Precocial

I was back in Cardiff today, this time with R, helping out with the grandsons in the absence of our co-grandparents. In truth, I'm not sure how much help we were, but we enjoyed ourselves, and I think the Boy Wonder was happy to have us there too. The Baby Brother doesn't appear to care who's around him, provided he gets fed and napped to his required schedule, and in between times is allowed to do absolutely whatever he wants.

When we collected the Boy from school he announced that after lunch he wanted to go to Forest Farm, and as it's been a while since we were all there together we were happy to oblige. I gave him the little bag of ground food I keep in the car, and he very carefully doled it out among the birds we met along the canal towpath. I was hoping to find some Golden-ringed Dragonflies, of course, but once again I was disappointed - though in contrast to last week there were scores of damselflies, including a couple of Beautiful Demoiselles, fluttering around the thick emergent vegetation.

The Boy Wonder isn't even slightly sentimental about cute little baby things, but even he was rather charmed by the Moorhen chicks we saw. A month ago I don't think I'd ever heard the word 'precocial', but after diligently viewing three weeks of Springwatch and its various nestcams, I'm now completely au fait with the concept of a bird that's able to move around and feed itself almost as soon as it hatches, and the term trips off my tongue as readily as if I'd invented it myself. It actually dates from the mid-19th century, and is based on the Latin word praecox, meaning 'early'; and while it was coined specifically to describe birds, the same root also gives us the more widely-used adjective 'precocious'. A bonus fun fact before I shut up: precocial birds are usually 'nidifugous' - meaning that they leave the nest shortly after birth.

Finally, I've now updated last Thursday's Skomer post, and replaced the phone image with a couple of better ones, if you'd like to see them.