A Great Crested Grebe nesting on the Long Water was also feeling the heat ...
... and so was a Starling at the Lido restaurant.
The dreaded pigeon-killing Lesser Black-Backed Gull was hunting in his usual place near the Dell restaurant. He caught a pigeon, but it struggled free.
Here it is recovering from the shock under a tree.
There were more Lesser Black-Backs than usual on the lake, including thirteen on the posts at Peter Pan.
The south shore of the Serpentine is lined with moulting geese and swans.
One of the Mute Swan families on the Serpentine ventured under the bridge on to the Long Water. The dominant male there spotted it and came steaming up the lake, and the family prudently retreated.
The first Greylag goslings are now quite large. The brood of five were cropping grass beside the Serpentine, undeterred by the crowds of visitors.
There are only two Mandarin ducklings left on the Long Water, but they are now fairly large and have a good chance of survival.
You would have expected the Little Owls at the leaf yard to be basking in the sunlight, but if they were I couldn't find them. There was one brief glimpse of the female on the edge of the nest hole.
David Element reports that there are lots of Red-Veined Darter dragonflies, following an influx of migrants from the Continent, all male so far. He saw at least nine at the Round Pond yesterday. This is his picture of one of them.
The dragonflies on the Serpentine and Long Water are mostly Black-Tailed Skimmers. This is a male ...
... and here is a female in the reed bed near the bridge.
Just in case you didn't know there were one or two pairs of Red-veined Darter in tandem recorded at the Round Pond near the end of May. A minimum of 12 RVD were seen on this date.
ReplyDeleteThey seem to prefer the Round Pond to the main lakes, where there are some but fewer. Migrating birds also show this preference. I suppose that it was because they use the highly visible Albert Memorial as a way marker, but I doubt that dragonflies have any distance vision to speak of.
Deletehello ralph.lovely blog (as usual !). do you know of any red coloured moths in the uk ?.
ReplyDeleteI've seen both Six-Spot Burnet and Cinnabar Moths in the park.
DeletePoor pigeon, it looks really shaken. That was a lucky escape it had. The power and the swiftness of the Gull's lunge was incredible. It's a very bulky bird for a Lesser Black Back.
ReplyDeleteI wonder that the bigger Gulls in the park, or the bird's own offspring, should not have learned the technique by now.
I'm surprised how slowly this technique is spreading. A few attempts by other Lesser Black-Backs, nothing from Herring Gulls. I think hunting pigeons is a pretty advanced skill, when you consider how fast they take off. Probably the gull waits till they close their eyes completely while bathing, as birds do, before making his lightning run. This may be a trick that is hard to observe and copy.
DeleteGreat pics again Ralph
ReplyDeleteOut if interest, do you recommend the Nikon P900? I have been saving up for it having heard lots of positive views, although I currently use a Canon Sx60 HS.
Thanks
It's a big brute whose real point is the enormous zoom. Still pictures are a bit under-coloured and over-contrasted, and the small sensor means that you get no fine detail when the picture is examined at full size. However, the small sensor is not a drawback when you are making videos, which are only 1720 x 1080 pixels, and it is extremely easy to use as a video camera, much more so than a dedicated video camera.
DeleteYou will need some kind of steadying device when using its full zoom, and for ordinary daily work when you can't carry a proper tripod I recommend a flexible Gorilla tripod that you can wrap round things -- get the largest and strongest of the range. Mine came with a ball head that wasn't up to the 900g weight of the camera -- its plastic tripod plate sagged badly when the heavy zoom lens was extended -- so I would recommend a small all-metal ball head for the tripod, which has a 1/4 inch screw. Ball heads normally have a 3/8 inch screw with an adapter for reducing this to 1/4 inch.
I'd meant – after your recent comment (which I can't now trace) about seeing a *male dragonfly dipping the tip of its abdomen in the water - to say that this is surely*female behaviour, ovipositing eggs. I am given additional impetus to do so after seeing, yesterday (Sunday) a female Emperor ovipositing onto the water-surface of the Round Pond, near the Coot nest on the small platform. She spotted a pile of damp weed on the edge of the platform and set to work; whereupon a sitting Coot made a mighty lunge and caught her. After a bit of a struggle - the dragonfly was over the length of its head - the Coot ate half the insect and then took the other half round the back of the platform to its mate, sitting on the nest and oblivious to the whole drama. I was impressed by this act of selfless dedication (not a trait I associate with Coots); but, as my partner said, perhaps dragonflies taste nasty but are good for you - the bird equivalent of spinach, or liver.
ReplyDelete