Thursday 1 May 2014

There are three Canada goslings on the Serpentine, carefully attended by their proud parents.


It is always a pleasure to see nature triumphing over the park keepers who try to stop the geese from breeding.

The two families of Egyptians still have six and four young, the same as yesterday. Both were on the south shore of the Serpentine, and both were wandering dangerously close to hungry gulls. Here a gosling menaced by a young Lesser Black-Backed Gull leaps to safety, while its father chases the gull away.


In the Long Water under the marble fountain, a fish also had a lucky escape when a Grey Heron lunged it it and missed.


As usual, Starlings are nesting in the two plane trees near the small boathouses. Here one of them emerges from the nest hole.


They were flying in and out constantly, and you could near the faint cheeping of the young birds in the nest. This hole is quite low and I have tried holding a camera up to try to see into the nest, but the prudent parents have built it quite far inside and round a corner.

The male Little Owl stayed out for several hours in the persistent drizzle. He shook the raindrops off from time to time, but didn't seem to be getting wet.


The Tawny Owl was also in his usual tree, high up on the north side, but he was almost hidden by leaves and all you could see was a few feathers.

A female Ring-Necked Parakeet sat on a blossoming tree, matching it rather well. She is eating a peanut I gave her to keep her still while I took her picture.

2 comments:

  1. Wonderful action picture of the 'leaping EG chick'! Pity nature does not display itself a little more conveniently for photographers. If you were drawing an 'action picture' of the EG parent chasing off the Gull, you could have displayed them so as to capture the 'action' without the need for a commentary. Still, you have captured some great, natural, action pictures on other occasions.

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    1. Thank you. At these times you don't actually know what you are photographing. You see something that might happen, press the shutter a few times, and discover what you have got when you go home and look at the pictures on the computer.

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