Friday 17 June 2016

The two newest families of Greylag Geese were united on the south side of the Serpentine. Each has four goslings, though I couldn't get all of them to appear together in a picture.


One of these families had been on the Long Water yesterday.

The other three families, also still together, were just along the shore. There are now 20 Greylag goslings on the lake, and 8 Canada goslings.

The three newest Canada goslings and their parents had also joined the first Canada family. Here is a picture of all of them, with the new addition at front right.


Behind them you can see an older Canada gosling from the first family, and at the back on the left the eldest Canada gosling, hatched on the tern raft. But the three in front of this last one seem to be Greylags which have been accidentally adopted in one way or another. Note their paler legs.

The Black Swan was attracting admiring looks on the Serpentine. He was following a Mute Swan, which was not his girlfriend but a smaller adult female.


The swans have been crowded out from the east end of the Serpentine by huge flocks of moulting geese, and the dominant swan on the Long Water has chased them out beyond the bridge, so they are all huddled in the middle part of the lake, apart from 14 on the Round Pond. This one was sitting in the middle of the path and refused to budge, so that the Liberty Drives buggy had to squeeze past it.


The Coots nesting in the middle of the Long Water, whose net was raided by a Herring Gull and the chicks lost, have doggedly started nesting again.


The Coots on the platform with a solar panel in the Round Pond have also nested again, and have two chicks, possibly more.


The Moorhens were changing place on their nest in the Italian Garden pond.


When I said that the second Grey Herons' nest on the Serpentine island was almost invisble, I spoke too soon. You can get a clear but distant view of it from the east side, an angle I had not noticed. Here are the two young ones. The second is sitting down and you can only see part of its back.


One of the Little owlets was perched next to his father, on father's favourite branch in the chestnut tree, and languidly stretching a wing.


Their mother was in the same tree, though shortly after I took this picture a Magpie flew at her and she retreated father into the leaves.


We had a picture of a Common Blue damselfly yesterday, but when you get a better one you have to use it. It was in the same place near the Round Pond, and may be the same insect.


Not far away, I saw a Meadow Brown butterfly for the first time this year.

4 comments:

  1. Funny that the Swan should have stood its ground before a buggy and not before a flesh and blood animal. I guess it either does not know what a mechanical vehicle is, or the dominant Swan is more scary than any human contrivance.

    That picture of the lady feeding the goslings is darling.

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    1. I don't think that swan would have moved aside for a Challenger tank. It was in one of those swan moods.

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  2. Fantastic damselfly photo. (I am in Shetland this week and haven't seen a single butterfly, damsel fly or dragonfly. No trees either, so here tree-nesting birds nest in holes in stone walls.)

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    1. Thank you. Interesting about the adaptability of the Shetland birds.

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