Wednesday 21 October 2015

One of the young Great Crested Grebes was fishing under the balustrade of the Italian Garden. Here is the moment when it took a fish under water.


And here is a Black-Headed Gull also caught in the act of seizing a rat-tailed maggot from the surface of the Serpentine.


There were a lot of hoverflies of several species this year, and evidently they laid a lot of eggs from which these peculiar aquatic larvae develop.

Several Ring-Necked Parakeets were in the catalpa trees near the Italian Garden, ripping up the pods and eating the beans, and also, I think, the soft pith inside the pods.


A Robin was eating a berry in the yew tree just the other side of the path.


This Blackbird eating berries in the rowan tree is a first-year male. He has not yet developed the yellow bill and eye ring of a mature male. Usually at this time of year a lot of immature Blackbirds arrive from northern Europe, and probably this is one of them.


I took a routine photograph of some Red-Crested Pochards with a Shoveller on their left, on the far side of the lake at the Vista. When I looked at the picture I was surprised to see that the duck on the far right was a female Wigeon. It is some years since any of these have visited the park.


The mother of the brood of Egyptian Geese at the Round Pond was sheltering her young under her wing. She seemed to be getting bored with just sitting there.


In spite of the drizzle, the male Little Owl was out on this usual branch in last year's nest tree ...


... and the female was in one of her favourite spots in this year's nest tree.

2 comments:

  1. It must have been interesting to see the Wigeon. I wonder how long she'll stay? I'm visiting the park on Friday and would love to see her

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    1. Rare visiting ducks don't usually stay here for more than a day -- they seem to be on their way to somewhere else. But we had the Scaup for months and the Goldeneye for weeks recently, so there's hope.

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