Tuesday 3 July 2018

The Great Crested Grebes with three chicks on the Long Water came out into the middle of the lake. The parents caught fish at a great rate ...


... and sometimes arrived almost at the same time. It's amazing how many fish a grebe chick can hold.


A family of Coots at the Vista, seeing someone with a plastic bag that might contain food, hurried over to take advantage of it.


One of the parents found an apple and seemed to like it.


The Coot family near the Italian Garden got tired of forcing their way through the floating weed, and rested on a fallen branch of the willow tree.


A few feet away, the Mute Swan family kept cool under one of the water jets.


The Canada Geese who had fifteen goslings have lost two of them, cause unknown. They still have the strayed Greylag gosling, in this picture on the far left next to its stepfather; and a Canada gosling noticeably smaller than the others, also possibly a stray, in the middle nearest to the camera.


The Canadas with three Greylag goslings cruised past.


This is the youngest family of Greylags ...


... and this is the oldest, with the goslings already little replicas of their parents.


The Egyptians near the bridge still have two goslings, now large enough to be safe from gull attack -- but look what just happened to two much larger young Canadas.


The Tufted Duck family at the island have lost one of their ducklings but still have five. They dive so much that it looks like fewer, but every now and then all of them are on the surface.


At Peter Pan, three Mallard ducklings were bustling around with their mother.


A Moorhen swam through a group of carp , scattering them. If it had been a duck the carp would not have been disturbed, but Moorhens swim as if riding an imaginary bicycle and the fish need to keep out of the way of their rapidly rotating sharp claws.


A young Blackbird sat quietly in the shallow water at the edge of the Dell waterfall.


Two young Magpies followed their parents around begging for food.


The male Little Owl at the leaf yard was in the upper chestnut tree. It needed three visits before I could photograph him without a branch in front of his face.


A Red-Tailed Bumblebee visited a purple flower in the wildflower patch behind the Lido.

2 comments:

  1. I think photographing the Little Owl's pretty (or rather handsome) face is worth any number of visits!

    Odd that the two poor teenage Canadas should have fallen prey to anything given their size. They'd be too large for gulls, even enterprising ones, right?

    Tufted ducklings look like little buoys.

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    Replies
    1. The goslings may have been attacked by foxes at night or dogs by day.

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