Monday 11 September 2017

Two Little Grebes were fishing under the parapet of the Italian Garden.


Two of the Mallard ducklings on the Round Pond have survived against the odds, and are now probably large enough to be out of danger from gulls.


One of the Bar-Headed Geese from St James's Park decided to pay us a visit, and was grazing at the Round Pond.


The Black Swan saw me and came over for a helping of Poundland's finest birdseed. All the waterfowl like this mixture.


There were 80 Pochards on the Long Water, mostly but not all male. Clearly these are migrants. Apparently the sexes migrate separately, males first. They were spread out all over the lake, so the most I could get in a picture was five, seen here during a shower.


There were also 13 Red-Crested Pochards, but these just fly in at random from Regent's Park, and don't migrate.


Three Shovellers skulked under a willow tree on the Long Water. We had some returning Shovellers here on 8 August, very early for them to arrive, but I think they went on to somewhere else and this is a new lot.


The Italian Garden fountains were turned off, and a pair of Moorhens took the opportunity to search through the algae to find food for a chick.


There was a Green Woodpecker on Buck Hill. It looks to be young, almost but not quite in adult plumage. I videoed a juvenile Green Woodpecker here on 5 September, but it was much younger looking than this one, and if it's the same bird it has grown a lot of adult feathers in six days.


Two Rose-Ringed Parakeets bickered over an apple stuck on one of the catalpa trees near the Italian Garden. They much prefer apples to the beans in catalpa pods, which need hard work to extract them.


On the other side of the Long Water, the white-faced Blackbird called softly to me from inside a bush. It took some time to find her and give her the daily treat of sultanas.


A Starling at the Lido restaurant was sitting down, in a most un-Starlinglike way. There seemd to be nothing wrong with its legs, and it was flying and landing normally.


An unusual video by Paul Turner -- the piebald rat near the bridge filmed in quarter-speed slow motion, so that it seems to move about as fast as a cow.


A Bronze Shieldbug climbed up the railings near the bridge.

No comments:

Post a Comment