The Mallard with three ducklings on the Long Water has managed to keep them, an exceptional performance on this dangerous lake though they are by no means out of danger yet. They were at Peter Pan.
So were the hopeless pair of Egyptian Geese who have never brought up a single gosling. The female was ruffled by the breeze.
The Coots' nest near the bridge which you can see at the beginning of this clip was hit by some unknown misfortune a few days ago. The same thing happened to a nearby Great Crested Grebes' nest. The Coots have abandoned their old nest -- an unusual thing for them to do -- and are building a new one a few feet along the bank.
The grebes who also lost their nest were just the other side of the bridge. The female encouraged the male by lying down in an inviting pose. Grebes can't mate in the water, so the message was clear: Let's get on with nesting again.
The grebe chick on the Long Water was on the far side as usual. A parent brought it a fish.
At the Serpentine island, one of the ill-anchored floating baskets had blown ashore. A Moorhen climbed around on it.
Just along the shore, the unusually fond pair were side by side as usual.
The young Grey Herons have lost their juvenile gawkiness and are now very elegant birds.
A Magpie near the bridge had stolen a bit of cooked meat from somewhere and settled in a quiet corner of a tree near the bridge to enjoy it.
A Song Thrush foraged on the ground below.
The Blue Tits' nest at the back of the Lido was very active, with parents bringing food every couple of minutes. Although there was a lot of noise on the path on a busy Sunday afternoon, you can just hear the young birds calling.
The Little Owl near the Albert Memorial sheltered from the afternoon drizzle under a thick clump of oak leaves.
There is a beautiful patch of oxeye daisies near the Italian Garden.
Although I much prefer wild flowers like this dogrose ...
... there is now doubt that this magenta and pink iris in the Rose Garden is a fine production.
Next to it, a Honeybee browsed in an allium flower.
Thank you for the video of the head-shaking creeps. They are stunningly beautiful birds.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is wonderful to see how fond they are of each other. (But predictive text is no one's friend.)
DeleteOh no I’ve just noticed! Grebes are most definitely not creepy
DeleteThe cygnets look so adorably clumsy and busy next to their stately mother.
ReplyDeleteWhat may have happened to the Coots' and the Grebes' nests? An animal attack, human interference, adverse weather?
That is a lovely iris. Wild purple irises bloomed in mass about three weeks ago here in the public parks, but the flowers are all dead now. But they'll come back next year as beautiful as ever, as surely as the seasons turn. Sometimes I think, and it comforts me, that if the entire city along with its inhabitants should be wiped out, they will still continue to bloom when the time is ripe.
Both the Coots and the GSGs lost their eggs in the attack. Heron, fox, who can say? The water is quite shallow here.
DeleteAfter the war, when London was littered with the ruins of bombed buildings, they were full of rose bay willowherb. It is the flower of bombed cities, just as poppies are the flower of trench warfare.
Pripyat might say much the same. It is a botanist's paradise.
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