Thursday 10 July 2014

The Tawny owlets were still in the chestnut tree they have been in recently, though you had to know exactly where they were to see them among the leaves. Here are two of them.


The Little Owl had retreated from the drizzle, and was probably inside his nest hole. He is a Mediterranean bird and finds the English climate trying. It was perfectly obvious that he was not out on his branch because the tree was full of tits of various kinds, including this young Blue Tit perched right in front of the owl's usual branch.


The improbably surviving Coot chick at Peter Pan was having a hard time climbing into the nest up the leaves made slippery by rain. It fell down several times, but eventually made it.


It couldn't use its tiny wings to help -- unlike a Great Crested Grebe chick, which uses its wings like front feet to climb into its nest.

A pair of Egyptian Geese has added another two young to the healthy total on the Serpentine.


No wonder the number of these birds is rising steeply.

The small rowan trees near the leaf yard had attracted a lot of birds. The fruit here is riper than that of the trees on Buck Hill, which had no birds in them at all when I passed. This Mistle Thrush approached the trees rattling loudly, and perched on top of one continuing to call for some time before it dived into the tree and started eating.


And this Blackbird must have been feeding young, because he flew away holding two berries in his beak.


While it was raining there were no rabbits on the grass around the Henry Moore statue except for a dead one that was being eaten by a Magpie.


When the rain stopped, 17 rabbits emerged and lolloped unconcernedly around their relative's corpse, while the Magpie continued to feed.

3 comments:

  1. thanks , as always, for your photos and text, but particularly for the young Blue Tit . To my delight , I have several of them, as well as Great Tits and a pair of Greenfinches coming to my 4th floor central London window feeder. My camera is not good enough for their speed, but it is a joy to sit quietly and watch them. Oddly ,my radio playing on the window sill doesn't bother them , just any sudden movement .
    Poor show, those rabbits..

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  2. But perhaps they were having a one-minute silence when I went past earlier.

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