Friday 14 June 2019

Two Wood Pigeons fought furiously on a nest. The battle went on for at least five minutes before they got tired and stopped, so this is just an excerpt.


A young Blackbird, now independent of its parents, foraged in the grass. They are less shy than adults, and it came quite close.


A Coal Tit fledgling near the bridge waited for its mother to bring it some food. I was giving the mother pine nuts, so it got plenty.


A Blue Tit was also coming down for food to give its young.


Near the Italian Garden, a Blackcap sang in a hawthorn tree. The only place from which it could be seen was directly below, making photography difficult.


Clive Murgatroyd sent this dramatic picture of a Cormorant catching a crayfish on the Serpentine. It's a Turkish crayfish, an invasive species. They had a population crash a few years ago, but are now returning.


The Coot family from the nest at the Dell restaurant, now down to four chicks, made their first outing away from the nest today. This is a perilous spot frequented by the notorious pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gull, who was fortunately somewhere else at the time.


A Moorhen searches for insects in an abandoned Mute Swan nest near the Lido restaurant. Nests are lousy places, literally, and it finds plenty.


A Greylag Goose ate willow leaves. Both geese and swans are fond of thes leaves.


One of the Bar-Headed--Greylag Goose hybrids has now moulted all its flight feathers. It's the second of these hybrids to arrive on the lake to moult and only got in a few days ago, so it scraped in at the last moment before becoming flightless.


The Mallard at Peter Pan is now down to two ducklings.


Two of these three ducklings at the Round Pond were in the last minutes of their little lives as careless human visitors frightened them away and they were taken by Carrion Crows. Jon Ferguson took this picture.


Realising that the last duckling would go the same way if he left it there, he captured it, took it home, and looked after it until it was picked up by the people from the sanctuary.


A Buff-Tailed Bumblebee foraged in a bramble flower beside the Long Water.


Most of the bumblebees in the park are of this species. There was also a Hairy-Footed Flower Bee on the bramble, but it wouldn't stop for long enough to be photographed.

4 comments:

  1. Hello!

    I haven't commented before, but I've enjoyed your blog for a couple of years now and like to look out for the individuals when I visit the park every so often!

    Regarding the mallard and two ducklings at Peter Pan, I walked past them at around 6.30pm today and saw her being followed by an Egyptian gosling that appeared to be abandoned. She wasn't accepting it and was trying to lose it, but it was still following her desperately when I left. It'll be interesting to see how that goes....!

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    1. Thank you. I hadn't seen that Egyptian gosling. There are two pairs of Egyptians on the Long Water who are absolutely hopeless about looking after their young. I hadn't seen any recent evidence of them breeding, but it looks as if one pair has, and has lost track of a gosling as they often do.

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  2. The death of the two poor duckings on account of human stupidity is too distressing for words :-( Thank God Jon Ferguson was there to act like the little survivor's guardian angel.

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    1. People are sadly ignorant and incredibly unobservant, and there is nothing we can do to remedy it.

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