Sunday 22 April 2012


Only three owlets visible today in one of the four horse chestnut trees, despite the best efforts of three people to find the others among the leaves. We are getting to the end of the Tawny Owl viewing season, but it has been an exciting six weeks. Here are two of them, caught in a moment when they emerged from cover.


A Mallard has an early brood of ducklings, but they were down to two by the time I arrived. I counted 118 Lesser Black-Backed Gulls and Herring Gulls on the lake, all eager to seize the survivors.


I looked for the Pied Flycatcher that had been reported yesterday on the London Bird Club Wiki site, but there was no sign of it. The most likely place to see one of these is flying across the footpath near the Peter Pan statue, though this one had been seen on the other side of the lake.

A Grey Heron in the Dell had speared a carp too large for it to eat, and was ineffectually poking it around under the waterfall. Herons often kill fish that they have no chance of swallowing, to the despair of owners of ponds carefully stocked with koi.

2 comments:

  1. Your green woodpecker was doing a spot of house-keeping inside the nest-hole this afternoon.No noise, just a brief glimpse of the top of an adult head and bill scraping about furiously and then a shower of 'sawdust'was ejected from the hole.

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    Replies
    1. They've been doing it for days. I can only suppose that they're extending the premises.

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