Spring is here and thoughts have turned to love (sort of!) here at The Lodge.
Birdlife all over the reserve is busy preparing for the breeding season.
Blue tits are looking for food to fatten themselves up in preparation for the days ahead, a pair of red kites are regularly spotted eyeing each other overhead, and two mallards are wandering the manicured grounds as I write in search of a new family-sized home.
Tosh, I hear you cry, it's just nature at work. And you'd be right.
Since life in the wild can be precarious, it would be folly for many smaller birds to to put too much faith in a single spouse.
And so large numbers of birds - from the aforementioned mallards to strutting songbirds - will get it on with just about any other feathered friend they can find.
Female birds, conscious that their nest could be attacked at any moment, may also lay an egg or two in a neighbour's nest as a kind of avian insurance policy.
But romance is not yet dead in the bird kingdom.
On a recent trip to nearby St Neots, I spotted a species that everyone knows mates for life - the mute swan, of course.
If one swan dies, its partner may remain single and celibate for several seasons - a big chunk of time for a bird that can only expect to live in the wild for 15 years or so.
Natural selection is at work here too - it's their survival strategy - and one which is rare among birds.
Unfaithfulness just wouldn't pay dividends for swans, as they are highly territorial. In fact, pairs often gang up on unwary intruders to defend their territory.
Such devotion regularly pays off - pairs that have been together for many years often raise more young than those that have just met.
So, while natural selection encourages smaller birds to practice polygamy, swans' devotion to their mate keeps them gliding on.
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