Monday 26 October 2015

The Great Crested Grebe family from the fallen poplar were beside the bridge as usual, but the parents are now thinking that the young ones ought to do their own fishing, and only feeding them occasionally. This one was preening and showing no sign of responding to appeals for food.


Eventually it lost patience and chased the young one away.


There was also a Cormorant at the bridge, extracting a lot of small fish from the wire basket.


The Black Swan was at the Dell restaurant giving the Mute Swans a hard time.  They seem to be quite frightened of it and never fight back.


A large and fierce adult Herring Gull considers that it owns a stretch of the south shore of the Serpentine. A young one wandered into its territory and started playing with a stone which was probably the adult's own toy. It got chased off.


The young Egyptian Geese at the Round Pond are now down to one. Both parents seemed to be looking after it attentively, but a moment's distraction might have caused them to wander off.


Virginia Grey, who watches these birds closely, thinks that their inattentiveness to their young is caused by there being more Egyptian Geese at the Round Pond, so that the pair are having to work harder to claim territory, and while they are doing this they forget their brood.

The sunshine had brought people on to the terrace of the Lido restaurant, and a Starling was waiting on one of the umbrellas for someone to leave a table, so that it could swoop down and grab the leftovers.


The restaurant staff are well aware of this and clear the tables very quickly, but Starlings are quicker.

A Wood Pigeon was eating berries in a variegated holly bush near Peter Pan.


The male Little Owl was on his favourite branch.


His mate was in the next tree, but tucked up high in the top with a leaf in front of her face, so there was no chance of a good picture.

2 comments:

  1. What a lovely plumage the starling had!

    I never thought I'd see the day where a mute swan was intimidated by anything living. You live and learn.

    I hope the Egyptians learn their lesson. But I'm not very hopeful :-(

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  2. The iridescent plumage of Starlings looks green in cross light as here. But if you have the sun shining over your shoulder there are wonderful purple glints in it as well.

    I fear that those Egyptians are not very bright. They will probably try again at a silly time in midwinter, like they did last year.

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