Monday 12 November 2018

A Little Owl looked out of the hole in the oak tree near the Albert Memorial.


A Great Tit delicately picked pieces out of a seed.


Long-Tailed Tits worked their way through the trees south of the Round Pond.


When Jackdaws returned to the park four years ago they were so shy that you couldn't get within fifty yards of them. Now they trot out and stare at you till you give them peanuts.


A Starling at the Dell restaurant shone in the sunlight.


A thunderstorm in the afternoon didn't stop a young Herring Gull from playing with a stick.


A pair of Herring Gulls displayed to each other. The gull on the left, presumably the male, offered the female leaves. But several times he lunged at her and she backed off, then returned immediately, holding out her wings slightly.


A Common Gull nearly overbalanced when it stepped on to a buoy that turned under its weight.


If you don't get a clear idea of size it can sometimes be difficult to tell the two species apart. I think the bird on the left is a Herring Gull and the other three are certainly Common Gulls, but the markings on the Herring Gull's bill and the colour of its legs are ambiguous.


The Black Swan was at the Vista, still maintaing an uneasy truce with the dominant pair of Mute Swans.


I couldn't see any Shovellers on the Long Water, just as numbers were beginning to build up. There was a lone drake on the Serpentine, and and this single one on the Round Pond.


The white Mallard and his mate were hanging around next to a reed bed. It seems odd that this very abnormal looking drake has found a mate ...


... while the dark Mallard brothers, who have been on the lake for several years, have never had mates and always go around together.


I wouldn't normally video Grey Squirrels, an intrusive North American species which has wiped out our native Red Squirrels in most of England. But this young one is rather sweet. It dug up several things too muddy to recognise and ate them.

4 comments:

  1. What a welcome sight, the lovely Little Owl!
    Perhaps leucistic-type mallards are more common than melanistic-type ones, and that is why the snowy white mallard has found a mate and the darker ducks haven't?
    I never tire of seeing pictures of jackdaws. If I had more free time I would even endeavour to catalogue their different facial expression!

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    1. Interestingly, it's the other way around. In the past 10 years we've had only two pure white Mallards and half a dozen very dark ones. Moderately dark and light ones of both sexes are fairly common and neither have problems with finding a mate.

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  2. I could see the 'orphan anvil' of the said storm, the latter also featuring on today's BBC political news, just after 4pm today from north London with the further line of storms beyond it. Jim

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    1. A slow moving storm then. The main one hit the park around 2.30 pm.

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