Babies in the Bulrushes

In mid July, Edith talked about various water plants. Over the last month I've particularly noticed the growing catkins of Bulrushes (also called reedmace).

Tufted ducks and bulrushes, July 20th

Once again, I visited the pond at Trinity Park and watched the waterfowl. The bulrushes make a fine hiding place for baby birds. This time, I could hear rustlings as young ducks and coots (I think) moved around the reedbed.  On the pond itself I saw:

• Two families of Tufted Ducks, each headed by a lone female. The young a somewhat bigger than he last time I saw them but still fuzzy and babyish. The numbers are reduced - there was one family with 6 babies and one with four.  The babies keep bobbing down in the water and up again.
• Two adult Moorhens and one youngster.
• One adult Mallard.
• One adult Coot.

Moses in the 'Bulrushes'.

I'd better get this out of the way now. In my head, I always call them Bulrushes although I'm told that they are really Reedmace (Typha latifolia). Many people say that the confusion is down to the picture above. When I attended Sunday School, nearly half-a-century ago, we read from an illustrated book of bible stories. Looking at the Moses in the Bullrushes picture reminds me of childhood Sunday mornings. We gathered round trestle tables in the 1950's built Christ Church, Hayes. Middlesex. We read stories, drew pictures and did other church-related things. One of the stories we read was about Pharaoh's daughter finding Moses in the Nile. The King James version of the bible says:

And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

It goes on to explain that Moses' mother managed to keep him hidden until he was 3 months old.

And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.
...
And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.

According to F. Nigel Hepper's "Planting A Bible Garden", The "Flags" could have been sweet flag (Acorus calamus). So, after all this fuss about names, it was a completely different plant. Returning from the banks of the Nile in ancient Egypt to a pond in Birmingham ...

Developing catkin, June 29th.

I had never thought about the way that the Bulrush catkins grow. They were just there - like fat, brown cigars on the end of a stalk, much like the ones I saw when I first started this blog in January. Since the beginning of the year, the neat catkins have become shaggier to the point that I could see birds collecting the fluff for their nests. At the end of June, I noticed young catkins forming. They were low enough to look down on and the golden spike was just a sign of things to come.  Now, a month later, they have their adult shape but are still a golden colour, ready to ripen into those handsome dark cigars.