Barbican Moorhens

More shocking in large ("L").
Back blip.

This moorhen mother had had it with this moorhenling, so is seen here shaking it by the head. Moorhen parents do this to stop overly assertive chicks from getting too great a share of their attention (the chick gets frightened so hangs back for a little while, giving its siblings a look in...), but can (in extreme cases) kill the chick particularly if resources are scarce so that the parent is stressed anyway. I've seen this head shaking behaviour many times (in moorhens and coots) but it still seems rather brutal every time, and the chicks do squeal terribly.

This family was living in a dense clump of reeds in one of the waterways at the Barbican! I also saw a juvenile moorhen eating a floating (dead) ornamental carp, but I was a long way away so the quality of the pictures don't do the scene justice.