Thursday 1 October 2015

The two Little Owls were side by side in this year's nest tree, preening each other and looking very affectionate. The female owl, bigger than her mate, is on the left of this picture.


Jim had put a coffee jar lid full of peanuts on a spike of the railings of the leaf yard, and was doing a roaring trade with at least three Nuthatches which were coming down again and again.


A pair of Coal Tits was also visiting every minute, taking smaller seeds. They were carrying these away and hiding them in crevices in trees to eat later.


A family of Long-Tailed Tits was crossing the gap in the trees at the Vista. They tend to pause on the brink of an open space to look around for danger, and this makes the restless little birds stay still for the couple of seconds it takes to get a photograph.


A pair of Egyptian Geese at the Lido, with their usual disregard for timing, have hatched a brood of five. The parents were keeping close, because a Herring Gull on the shore was looking at the babies and its intention was clear.


One of the Great Crested Grebes from the nest on the fallen poplar was fishing under the bridge. It caught a perch and set off with it to find one of the youngsters on the Long Water.


On the Serpentine, one of the male Mute Swans was in a particularly stroppy mood. First he chased off a teenager ...


... and then he came back and chased away some adults, one by one, until he had an area the size of a football pitch for himself and his mate. Evidently he was trying to impress her, and probably did.


Today's gull toy is a large mossy stone. This young Herring Gull was playing at dropping it into the water and catching it before it sank out of reach, quite a difficult game. After half a dozen drops it lost the stone and flew away.

2 comments:

  1. Quite a scoop catching both the owls together, and canoodeling.(if that's how you spell it..?) Thank you.
    The amount of fish that body of water produces amazes me, enough for all those hungry beaks it seems. Is it ever not enough?

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    1. The Cormorants often take almost all the medium-sized fish. Then they leave. If you see no Cormorants, you can be sure that the fish are severely depleted. Grebes have more modest requirements and can also eat small invertebrates, so they don't do that.

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