Friday 12 August 2016

On one of the posts at Peter Pan, a young Lesser Black-Backed Gull was begging its parent to feed it. As usual, the parent took no notice.


(By the way, this is not one of the pigeon-eating pair, who also have a begging offspring at the moment.)

A Cormorant was washing energetically in the Long Water.


The Black Swan went in search of his adopted cygnet and found it on the Long Water. Then they were both chased off by the dominant male and went under the bridge to the relative calm of the Serpentine.


The Great Crested Grebe family from the island were having a quiet moment.


Both the Little Owls from the chestnut tree were out enjoying the sunshine. This is the female.


And here is the male. You can see that the claw he broke a couple of months ago, on toe 3 of his left foot, has now grown back. Owls perch on branches like parrots, with toes 2 and 3 facing forward and 1 and 4 back. Counting starts with the 'big toe', which faces backwards on all birds, and then goes outwards from the front, so it is the last toe that is turned backwards.


Both the Little owlets from the oak tree near the Albert Memorial were also visible.


One of them was bored with being photographed.


While we were taking pictures of them we met a Swiss family, and the boy was adeptly catching grasshoppers. They didn't seem to mind this, and perched calmly on his hand. This made them easier to photograph than usual. This is (I think) a Common Green grasshopper, Ononcestus viridulus -- they aren't always green.


And this one, which confusingly is much greener, is (again I think) a Meadow grasshopper, Chorthippus parallelus.


To complete the day's insects, here is a female Emperor dragonfly laying eggs on a reed stem in one of the ponds in the Italian Garden.


I hadn't seen a Grey Wagtail in the park for a while. But as I went home, there was one on the back wall of Holy Trinity church in Prince Consort Road.

5 comments:

  1. *Pops head*

    My, how has the adopted Cygnet grown!
    Now to furiously read back all entries until I catch up.

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    1. Welcome back to the soap opera. Hope you had a good holiday.

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  2. Thanks! It's good to be home again and back to one's routine.


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  3. Thanks for pointing out the Little Owls today. We would not have noticed otherwise sitting below the tree. We kept on catching the grasshoppers for some time. Even the little one got into it eventually.
    Very fascinating read your blog. We will come back for updates.

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    1. It was good to meet you, and thanks for your help with the grasshoppers. By the way, the first one, which I thought was a cricket, was not: it was a grasshopper with very long antennae. But crickets have even longer antennae, longer than their bodies.

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