Friday 29 August 2014

This young Carrion Crow is this year's offspring of Charlie and his mate Melissa. He is known as Kevin, though of course he may be a girl crow. Although crows are nervous birds, he has learned from his parents that some humans can be trusted. He is eating dried mealworm pellets out of Paul Turner's hand.


Paul had also seen three of the Hobbies, one of them at the top of a plane tree eating a small bird. By the time I arrived it had finished its meal, but had also come down to a lower branch where it was possible to get a reasonable picture.


This Greylag Goose on the Serpentine was chewing a twig which had fallen into the lake, for no reason that I could discover. It continued to do this for several minutes, sometimes going away and returning.


The young Grey Wagtail was at the east end of the Serpentine, running up and down the shore and around the floating baskets of water plants.


The single Great Crested Grebe chick in the same area was resting while waiting for its parents to bring food. The young birds are strangely flat, and look like floating bath sponges to which the head of an unrelated bird has been attached.


A Grey Heron was preening itself on one of the fence posts around the permanent reed bed near the Lido. There was only room for one foot, but that is no problem for a heron.


For the past few days there has been a large flock of Long-Tailed Tits moving slowly around the bushes at the bottom of Buck Hill, followed by other small birds.


The larger tits in the flock come out for food when I pass, but Long-Tailed Tits have absolutely no interest in humans, and treat them as if they didn't exist. This allows you to get quite close for a photograph.

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