On the east facet of St Mary’s church, inside a shimmering dome of spray, you’ll discover Hitchin’s most resourceful residents. Right here, in the course of the River Hiz, a pair of moorhens have sought sanctuary on the bottom of the Sir Ian Dixon memorial fountain.
It’s not the primary time that widespread moorhens (Gallinula chloropus) have favoured this spot. Firstly of the primary Covid lockdown, a pair (probably the identical birds as they’re trustworthy to location, if not at all times to their mates) constructed a socially distanced nest on the fountain plinth and raised two broods. Since then, the plucky duo have returned a number of instances. A few years in the past, they even tried to nest on the bottom regardless of newly put in anti-moorhen spikes. Utilizing the protruding prongs as their warp, they wove a platform with a weft of lifeless sticks in a Dadaist piece of efficiency artwork depicting the resilience of nature.
In a extra rural space, they may have chosen a website in marginal vegetation or a waterside tree corresponding to willow, for they’re succesful, if ungainly, climbers – sometimes nesting as excessive as eight metres above the bottom. However in city environments, moorhens are canny opportunists, making good use of the issues that they discover: timber pilings, punts, outdated tyres, upturned automobile bumpers and, in 2015, a buying trolley partially submerged within the river.
Final week, nonetheless, after torrential rain, the swollen river swallowed the plinth. Undeterred, the moorhens splashed into motion. Their platform (now a houseboat) grew to become a top-floor flat, then a tower with ivy-leaf crenellations even flying a Greggs wrapper flag for a time. And now, sitting pleased with the water on her inexperienced turret, the feminine flirts her white undertail coverts, flicking beads of water from her glistening again, whereas her mate presents her with pine twigs, leaves and Haribo packets for additional house enhancements.
The antics of Hitchin’s moorhens have featured within the native paper and on social media. And whereas they’re not the rarest, quickest or most melodious of birds, in case you watch a pair nest-building, you may be shocked by what they do with the issues that we on a regular basis folks depart behind.
