Tuesday 3 October 2017

The Little Grebe on the Round Pond came right to the edge for a close-up view, in spite of a small crowd watching it.


Here it is swimming under water.


Two of the young Great Crested Grebes from the nest on the Long Water were playing at nest building, using the abandoned Coot nest under the willow next to the bridge.


There were plenty of Red-Crested Pochards at the Serpentine island. The drakes are now back in their showy breeding plumage.


The Black Swan can face down any Mute Swan on the lake except for the three dominant males, one on the Long Water and one at each end of the Serpentine.


Blondie the Egyptian Goose had been bathing, and flapped her pale wings to dry them.


This is one of the young Greylags from this year, still not quite adult in appearance and with the butterscotch-coloured feet that birds of this age have.


This Black-Headed Gull's rings show that it's from Germany, and was ringed at the bird observatory on Helgoland island.


A young Herring Gull was playing with a small seed ...


... but this third-year one had a big plane seed. You'd think it was too old for toys.


A Herring Gull struggled to swallow an enormous piece of bread. It managed in the end.


A Magpie was also having trouble with a bit of bread, in this case because it was very stale, and had to be held down firmly and ripped apart with a considerable effort.


Another Magpie had found more agreeable food in the rowan trees on Buck Hill.


So had a Blackbird.


A Long-Tailed Tit paused in a tree at the foot of the hill. The flocks have quite predicatble routes, dictated by the lines of trees in the park.


No sight of a Little Owl again today. The hole in the oak tree near the Albert Memorial had been invaded by a couple of insolent squirrels.

10 comments:

  1. Lovely close up footage of the Little Grebe. I hadn't appreciated that they seem almost spherical...yet still so dainty!

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    1. They fluff themselves up to a startling extent when on the surface, especially on cold days. A fraction of a second before diving, they clench their feathers down and become slim and streamlined, the shape shown in the underwater picture. Incidentally, this is the first time I have been able to photograph a Little Grebe under water.

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    2. A fascinating detail, thank you. Is there no end to the charm of this diminutive bird?

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  2. How very lovely, the picture of the Magpie with the red berries.

    No wonder the Little Grebe attracted such notice: it's such a charming little bird, so quiet and unassuming, and yet so prodigiously efficient.

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    Replies
    1. Its Spanish name, zampullín chico, is charming too.

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  3. didnt know there is such a blog on this park. I was visiting the park on 1 oct and photographing some of the birds too and I found alot of the bird names from your blog. Thanks

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  4. I'm glad you found the blog helpful. Often you can find the Chinese name of a bird by typing the English name (or the scientific name) into English Wikipedia. Open the article on the bird, then look down the list of languages on the left side to see if there is a Chinese version of the article. Open this, and you will find the Chinese name. I just used this method to find that the Chinese for a Little Grebe is 小鷿鷈.

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  5. i do have a bird that not able to identify possible to help?
    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5xp9hm9roviy731/AAAIoqxsUsOBD6ByDDfn3jgta?dl=0

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