Thursday 20 December 2012


A grey rainy day. A Pied Wagtail was foraging on the waterlogged grass, picking up small larvae of a yellowish colour which had floated out of the ground. There seemed to be plenty of them.


There are three Great Black-Backed Gulls currently visiting the lake, two adults and a young one, though I have not seen all three together. They have been here for at least a week, and may be the same as the ones that have come to the park in recent months. I think that they only visit the park for short periods, and spend the rest of the day scavenging somewhere else, possibly on the river at low tide.

The young one has a very aggressive attitude. Today I found it on the shore of the Serpentine eating a stale-looking fish that it had certainly not caught itself. But someone started feeding the swans a few yards away, and it paddled over to get a bit of the action. As it arrived, it was threatened by a Mute Swan, which clearly annoyed it, as it pecked at a Coot and then at an Egyptian Goose, chasing both away.

But it was not satisfied with that, and tried to pull feathers out of a swan's tail.


The swan rounded on it furiously and chased it away. Sometimes even a Great Black-Backed Gull meets its match.


In Kensington Gardens, only the female Tawny Owl was out on her balcony on the nest tree. There was a Green Woodpecker in a tree near the top of the Gloucester Road. They are shy birds, and if you approach them they go round to the back of the tree or fly up to a high branch.

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