Friday 10 May 2019

Young Long-Tailed Tits ...


... are now out flying with their parents.


One of the Blue Tits nesting in a gas street lamp behind the Lido arrived to feed the chicks. The nest is inside the bulge at the top of the hollow cast iron column.


A Goldcrest came out on a twig beside the Long Water.


A Pied Wagtail hunted insects among the daisies.


The female Little Owl near the Albert Memorial was out on a branch, but vanished into her hole a moment after I took this picture.


I saw Blue Tits flitting around, and they must have been mobbing her. Later she came out of the hole, looking agitated, and and preened to calm down.


A young Herring Gull was repeatedly flying up and diving into the Serpentine.


It was just possible to get a very distant view across the lake of the young Grey Heron in the nest on the south side of the island.


A pair of Moorhens sat comfortably together on the sun-warmed kerb at the edge.


Moorhens have a peculiar habit of sitting on their haunches in an un-birdlike way, more like a kangaroo.


The hopelessly incompetent Egyptian Geese in the Italian Garden have lost their last gosling, and were perching gormlessly on the stone urns beside the marble fountain.


A male Brimstone butterfly used his long proboscis to drink nectar from a flower. When they fold up their brilliant yellow wings to reveal the pale green underside they are well camouflaged.


A Honeybee browsed in the ceanothus bush at the back of the Lido.


An unauthorised wild rose was growing in the tidy hedge.

2 comments:

  1. Maybe they sit like that because of their toes?

    Love the picture of the wagtail among the daisies. Why is the wild rose unauthorised? Now I have the picture of a delinquent flower in my mind.

    Preening must be a self-soothing strategy. My canary used to preen when he was frustrated, irritated, or scared.

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    Replies
    1. A Moorhen's long legs do fold up in the conventional way under their wings. Maybe they get cramped, which causes them to sit sometimes with their legs in this partly unfolded position.

      The hedge is supposed to be a nice tidy gardener's hedge of one species. It's over a 'wildflower patch', sown every year with carefully selected seeds, which haven't come up yet. And in the meantime a real wild flower has had the temerity to grow without asking for permission.

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