Friday 26 July 2019

The cooler weather has brought the small birds out from the bushes where they were sheltering from the sun. A female Blackcap was tut-tutting beside the Long Water.


A band of Long-Tailed Tits flew by ...


... bringing a Blue Tit with them.


There was a brief glimpse of a Grey Wagtail in the Dell.


Calls from several places revealed a family of Reed Warblers in the reed bed at the Diana fountain, and parents were flying across the path to find insects in the flower bed.


A Jay which had been given a large nut, I think a pecan, put it in a crack in a fallen tree trunk to peck at it more effectively.


The male Little Owl near the Albert Memorial came out in the afternoon.


A Grey Heron, having nothing better to do, was trying to rip up the nylon netting over the floating baskets around the island.


A Common Tern flew on to the Long Water, the first seen here for some time. But no sooner had it perched on a post than it was knocked off again by a Black-Headed Gull. It flew off to catch some fish.


It's just possible to see the Great Crested Grebes' nest at the east end of the island through a gap in the bushes.


One of the young Moorhens at Bluebird Boats prepared to leap off the kerb.


The large wings of Egyptian Geese look even more complicated than they are because the various tracts of feathers are different colours.


A new group of Greylag Geese, including many young ones newly able to fly, has arrived on the Serpentine.


They enjoyed a splashy wash.


Nothing causes as big a splash as a Mute Swan rinsing its enormous wings.


There was just one Red Crested Pochard on the Serpentine. They come and go unpredictably between the London parks.


The snack packets dropped by messy visitors are often interesting.


This one says 'Cheetos', spelt چيتوز (chītūz). However, reference to Wikipedia shows that in Arabic they are spelt تشيتوس (tshītūs). And the real thing has a tiger on the packet, not a monkey. So these are fake Cheetos. Also, the initial letter is not part of the standard Arabic alphabet, and is used to represent -ch- in Urdu and Persian, and sometimes in Gulf Arabic. So we have some idea of where these bootleg cheesy things originated.

2 comments:

  1. Leave it to Ralph to find an empty bag of cheetos and turn it into a delightfully informative occasion (prodesse et delectare). I wonder that you never went into teaching - you'd have young people hanging from your every word.

    Am having a blonde moment: British Long Tailed Tits are aegithalos caudatus rosaceus, right? They differ a bit in coloration from Spanish ones.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, ours are rosaceus. I think yours are irbii, a little darker and with a more stripy front. Both very different from the nominate subspecies caudatus of northern Europe, with an all-white head and front.

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