After a long lifetime watching wildlife I still find moorhens a bit of a puzzle. Judging by their behaviour I suspect that the moorhens themselves are more than a little puzzled. The family of birds to which they belong, called by experts the rails, includes dozens of species. While some are widely distributed, others are not. Among them are some of the world’s rarest and most endangered species.
Our moorhen has a cosmopolitan range, and is far from rare. It loves marshy places, and while it is prepared to mix it with the ducks, geese, swans, gulls, and coots, at the bread counter on the nearby park lake, it can also be found in more remote areas. Here it is by no means tied to the waterside; I have often flushed it from grassy places some way from water. Occasionally I have even disturbed it from a tree. Its flight seems weak and somewhat laboured, and it flies with the legs dangling. When put up it is as likely to run like some demented clockwork toy, head down, to the nearest cover, than to fly. All this makes it seem as if the moorhen is a bit of a gangling misfit. Such is by no means the case. I have often remarked on its apparent gracefulness as if picks its way with ease, head down, seeming to measure every tread carefully, across marshy land.
Mainly brownish-black it has oblique white stripes along its flanks. The beak is yellow-tipped, becoming red, which latter extends to a ‘shield’, like a blob of sealing wax, on the forehead. Its legs and large feet are green, with a red garter. It moves jerkily, continually fliting its tail, and as it flies or runs away, it shows a startling inverted white V-mark. Like the white markings exposed by deer as they flee, this is an effective warning to others of its kind that there is danger about.
Its size twelve feet help to spread its weight when it walks of soft ground. But a swimming moorhen makes hard going of it, with its head constantly bobbing to and fro. This is because, unlike the ducks and other waterfowl it has no webbing between the toes to help it thrust its way through the water.
When it comes to nest building, moorhens are pretty skilled. A favourite site is amongst the new reed growth of spring, around the water margin, or among the waterlogged twigs of a fallen tree branch. First a flat platform is made of live and dead reeds, to raise it safely above the water level. Then a shallow bowl is fashioned to hold the six to eight buff-coloured eggs, which are splashed with boot-polish brown markings. As a young boy I quite enjoyed a dish of tasty, fresh moorhen’s eggs. This, of course, was before the collection of wild bird’s eggs rightly became unfashionable, indeed illegal. Moorhen chicks are like animated balls of black fluff, and are able to swim and run actively not long after hatching. They stay with the parent bird for several days after hatching.
Scanning through the entries in my diary for 1958 (yes nineteen fifty-eight!), I found the following entry, which brought memories flooding back. Walking along the bank of local stream I came suddenly upon a moorhen. In extreme alarm it threw itself into the water, swam rapidly to the far bank, and then submerged by grasping reed growth, pulling itself down until only the tip of its beak, with the nostrils, showed above the surface. And there it sat, as long as I cared to watch it. Ordinarily it would have been impossible to see it, but the water was unusually clear, so I could even pick out, through my binoculars, its anxious gaze as it watched me.
The moorhen is an important item of food for the feral mink, which are now widespread across our land. Drainage of wetlands, and the general lowering of the water table have also led to falls in their numbers in some areas. In my subjective opinion I see fewer moorhens than I did half a century ago, although the experts tell me there is little hard evidence for this. What is certain is that this delightful little bird is still out there for all to see who would go in search of it. Happy moorhen hunting!