Sunday 30 November 2014

Attempts to feed the Coal Tit were frustrated by the local Robin, which came down to the railings and stood over the food. It only ate one nut, but stayed there for at least five minutes ...


... while the Coal Tit had to wait on a twig until I put more food in a different place.


The male Tawny Owl came out to his usual station on the nest tree in mid-afternoon.


Lower down in the tree, a Starling was perched in front of a hole, singing in a determined and aggressive manner. This hole was a Starlings' nest until the Ring-Necked Parakeets took it. Now it looks as if the Starlings are taking it back.


Here is another Starling, this time eating rowan berries on Buck Hill.


There were also plenty of Blackbirds, Song Thrushes and Mistle Thrushes. However, there is no repetition of last year, when large flocks of Starlings descended on the tree and stripped it bare in a few days. There is no shortage of Starlings in the park, but they are mostly staying at the Round Pond.

The young Grey Wagtail was back on the edge of the Serpentine between the Lido restaurant and the swimming area. It was remarkably well camouflaged among the fallen leaves, and only visible because it was running around.


At Peter Pan, one of the young Great Crested Grebes was playing with an autumn leaf. It is its first autumn, an exciting new experience.


As I went home in the gathering dusk, the familiar Black-Headed Gull with the ring number EY09813 came out to catch bits of biscuit in midair.


It always stands in the same place, at the south end of the line of posts at the Vista, year after year. Gulls are creatures of habit -- but not always the same habits. The Black-Headed Gull with the Dutch colour ring E2Rz, which I saw and wrote about on 20 November, was seen in Gloucester in 2010 and in Porthcawl in 2011. However, it spends its summers in Holland in exactly the same place, the Veluwemeer, where it perches on an electricity pylon.

2 comments:

  1. Am I right in getting a bit worried about the unseasonable (or is it anymore?) mild weather confusing animals to alter their mating times? Have just read about some frogs already spawning. But I know a lot of birds start singing in winter- nothing like the old 'blackbird singing in the dead of night' , in December .

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    1. They will sort themselves out, I think, except possibly for the hopelessly confused Egyptian Geese. And remember how many more small birds survive a mild winter (assuming that we have one).

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