It started washing itself, by plunging repeatedly into the water and flying up to the twig above to dry and preen.
Nearby, a Cormorant was having a wash in its own wild style.
A Carrion Crow exploring a bin had found a carrier bag bearing the name of a local shop. This looked hopeful, so out it came.
The bag was tipped up to extract the contents.
There was nothing but an empty sushi box and salad tub.
Oh well, better luck next time.
Someone had rather oddly given some grapes to a Canada Goose. It seemed to like them.
But an offering of raw spinach was ignored by all the birds.
Some Feral Pigeons at the Dell restaurant were very lucky indeed.
The Dunnock in the Rose Garden was waiting hopefully under the feeder for some spillage to come its way.
A Starling on the Parade Ground found an earthworm.
A Pied Wagtail was standing on a mound of earth, looking around for a good place to hunt.
A Goldcrest accompanied a flock of Long-Tailed Tits along the south shore of the Serpentine, searching for bugs in the trees.
A Little Owl was visible through the twigs in the lime tree near the Henry Moore sculpture.
And the owl near the Albert Memorial was looking down from her hole.
Now that you mention grapes ans spinach, I've observed that birds do have something resembling a sweet tooth. My sparrows will not eat whole-grain bread. They like white bread best of all.
ReplyDeleteYou would have expected it in birds that eat fruit, which includes both corvids and thrushes, which like sweet biscuits. Less expected in geese. And does spinach taste too bitter to them, as it does to young children? You would have thought that the plants they normally eat were harsher than spinach. Maybe it was just unfamiliarity.
DeleteI've seen a lot of places encouraging people to feed ducks grapes instead of bread. Apparently something specific about them gives park ducks a more balanced diet?
ReplyDeleteNever heard of this, but really anything is preferable to bread when feeding waterfowl.
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