... the other one came me right up and dashed around my feet.
A Dunnock was framed by a twisted branch near the bridge.
A Goldcrest sang in the Rose Garden.
One of the pair of Mistle Thrushes in the Dell perched in a treetop and rattled furiously at a Magpie on the ground below.
I couldn't find any Redwings or Fieldfares on the Parade Ground, but there was a pair of Pied Wagtails running around and calling to each other.
The Little Owl near the Albert Memorial is back in possession of her hole after trouble with squirrels, Stock Doves, and even a pair of Mallards insolently perched on top of the branch.
The Grey Heron chicks peered curiously out of their nest.
The Coots at the east end of the Serpentine have now built up their nest to within a few inches of the surface, and are tirelessly adding more twigs to the structure.
A pair on the Long Water have built yet another nest against one of the posts at Peter Pan. These always fail, as big gulls sit expectantly on the posts and take advantage of a moment's inattention.
There's a new Great Crested Grebe nest in a reed bed on the east side of the Long Water, here photographed from the other side of the lake.
Only a few of the grebes here seem to realise that reeds are a good material to make nests from.
The grebes at the west end of the island are making another attempt at attaching a nest to the wire basket, which will probably collapse yet again.
The nest at the east end also fell apart, but the pair were hanging around the area ready to start again. They have succeeded in this place, so it's not hopeless.
Egyptian Geese have no difficulty with their nests in tree holes, but looking after their young is another matter. This is the pair that have never succeeded in 15 years, in their usual place in the Italian Garden.
Recently the female disappeared for a couple of weeks, and may have been making another doomed attempt, but she seems to have given up. She is a very blonde bird, almost as pale as Blondie on the Serpentine.
One of the two Bar-Headed--Greylag Goose hybrids was preening on the shore.
If you twitch the branches of a flowering yew tree it releases thick clouds of pollen.
Tom was at Rainham yesterday, where he photographed three Buzzards circling together.
There were also reports of a group of three Buzzards from Richmond Park and Box Hill, which may well have been the same ones. They would have had to cross an area wider than the whole of Greater London, but that is nothing to a Buzzard.
He also saw an early Peacock butterfly.
If anyone did that with a yew tree in some rural parts of Spain, people would begin to run away. Yew Trees are popularly believed to be lethal, so much so that people won't even sit in their shadow.
ReplyDeleteSo much nesting action today!
All parts of the plant are toxic except the red fleshy part of the fruit. The ancient Britons ate yew leaves as a means of suicide. You need to eat about a cupful, not easy.
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