Sunday 18 September 2016

The male Little Owl at the leaf yard was on his usual perch.


After  few minutes he went back into his hole. Shortly afterwards a Rose-Ringed Parakeet arrived in the tree and incautiously started looking into the hole.


There was a brief flurry of movement and the parakeet left at top speed, screeching.

His mate was in the next tree, getting bored. She yawned ...


... stretched ...


... and called to her mate, and they had a little duet to pass the time.


A young Herring Gull near the Serpentine island was carrying a leaf around. It wasn't playing with it. It seemed rather like a child vaguely clutching a teddy bear.


A Jackdaw perched on an urn in the Italian Garden, eating a peanut I had given it.


Finding this a bit dry, it flew down to a duckboard in a pond and had a drink.


A young Great Crested Grebe caught a crayfish.


The young heron that has been hanging around the Dell restaurant is gradually working up its nerve for a frontal assault on the tables.


There are only a few berries in the yew trees this year. A Blackbird was making the most of them in the tree next to the bridge.


This is the first rabbit I've seen for a couple of months. They have been badly hit by myxomatosis, and probably also by hungry foxes bringing up families. This one seemed healthy enough, but then it started trying to climb the Henry Moore sculpture, so I'm not so sure about its sanity.

6 comments:

  1. I love the 'punk hairdos' on the older Grebelets! The stretching owl pic is lovely too. On hard days, your blog Ralph is a positively therapeutic evening treat! Thanks.

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    1. Thanks for your kind words. Couldn't have done this blog without the Little Owls. They are real troupers, and have been on it literally since the first post in April 2012.

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  2. Wonder if Rabbit was looking for a mineral lick? Jim n.L.

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    1. The stone is travertine, calcium carbonate, a very porous rock. There does seem to be some efflorescence on it, but of what? Do rabbits crave calcium?

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    2. Wonderful pictures of the Little Owl! If anything can distract me from worrying about the Black Swan, is a jolly picture of the ever-entertaining Owls.

      That young begging Heron is an incredible sight, to be sure.

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    3. The young heron was there again today. I'm just waiting for him to leap on to a table and seize a sausage, as the older one used to do.

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