Friday 9 November 2012


The park is still full of migrant Song and Mistle Thrushes and Blackbirds. The fact that they are migrants may explain their fearlessness; when I photographed a Song Thrush bathing in a puddle on Monday, it let me get within six feet of it, which is most unusual for a thrush. Here is a female Blackbird in the yew tree which many of these birds visit for berries.


The youngest Great Crested Grebe was investigating a post and the net attached to it. It did seem to be picking off small bugs to eat. One thinks of grebes as living exclusively on fish and other water creatures, but they will take anything they can catch. Little Grebes are fast enough to snatch passing dragonflies, which they carefully turn round and swallow head first.


The Tawny Owls didn't seem to be in their usual tree, though it is hard to tell, and there was no sign of the Polish Black-Headed Gull. So I went up to the Round Pond to try to photograph some gull rings for Roy Sanderson.

The six young Egyptian Geese are still with us, and were in their usual place at the northeast corner. Here some Greylag Geese, arriving from the Long Water, come down on the pond.


And here, in the light of the setting sun, a pair of Mute Swans mimic the spire of St Mary Abbots church behind them.

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