Wednesday 5 June 2019

Blue Tits were feeding their young beside the Serpentine ...


... and near Queen's Gate.


A young Long-Tailed Tit waited to be fed in a bush beside the Long Water.


Tom, who was at Rainham Marshes, got a splendid picture of a young Bearded Tit in the reeds.


A Wren beside the Long Water hopped around ticking furiously. The reason for its anger was a Carrion Crow on the ground below, dangerously near its nest.


The two Little Grebes were on the Long Water near the bridge, and wouldn't come out of the reeds to be photographed while I was there. But David Element waited longer and got an excellent picture of one of them.


Every now and then we have to have a picture of a Great Crested Grebe doing nothing, because they do it so well.


The Coot on the nest under the balcony of the Dell restaurant stood up, revealing five chicks and an unhatched egg that is probably a dud.


One of the young Coots at the boathouse threaded its way through a tangle of weed and algae, pausing occasionally to eat some.


Every year Moorhens nest under the platform at Bluebird Boats, and you see nothing until some chicks appear on the open water. They were already half grown by the time they came out.


The Greylag family are down to seven goslings, which they are looking after with their usual attentive care, but it has been a terrible year for predation.


When the Mute Swans are moulting, many of them sit in a messy line on the edge of the Serpentine next to the bridge.


The Grey Heron nest on the northeast corner of the island is still active, though it seems unlikely that its young tenants will produce produce anything.


It was a good day for butterflies, with a female Common Blue at Peter Pan ...


... and a Red Admiral ...


... and a Speckled Wood within feet of each other beside the Long Water.


The wildflower patch in the Rose Garden attracted Buff-Tailed Bumblebees. I can't identify this pink flower, but it was growing on a tall thin stem with pointed leaves like some kind of Dianthus.


A Honeybee visited a knapweed flower.

4 comments:

  1. Pictures of Grebes doing nothing are good for the soul, and necessary.

    The little Wren is in such a paroxysm. Funny how such a tiny little body can produce such fury.

    Whoever came up with the surname "ruficollis" (was it Linneaus?) knew his stuff perfectly well.

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    1. I don't know who coined the name Tachybaptus ruficollis. Linnaeus called it Colymbus minutus.

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  2. Beardie: "Will you lot ever stop poking lenses at me? Speak up I can't hear ya!" Jim

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    1. I've noticed that birds don't much mind my long lens, which has a very deep lens hood that shades the shining eye of its lens. But they absolutely hate the bridge camera, whose lens they can see.

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