Tuesday 16 July 2019

The young Greylag Geese are now quite hard to tell from the adults. They were chased off ...


... by the father of the single Greylag gosling, who was in an unusually aggressive mood.


One of the five Mallard ducklings in the shallow water near Peter Pan came out from under a bush and started whizzing around at high speed. Maybe it was trying to catch midges.


Their mother took them to a sheltered place on a rock near the Italian Garden.


The Great Crested Grebe with two chicks on the Long Water was surrounded by Common Blue Damselflies whirring about. I was hoping it would try to catch one, but sadly it didn't.


The grebe under the willow near the bridge was sitting comfortably on the nest.


Ahmet Amerikali good some good shots today, and sent me the following four. One of the two young Grey Herons caught a small fish at a reed bed near the Lido.


One of the Reed Warblers looked out of the reeds.


A Blackcap searched for ripe berries in a bramble patch near the bridge.


One of the pair of Whitethroats in the Rose Garden caught a spider for its young.


Some of the young Great Tits are still begging for food from their parents. I found this one in a hawthorn near the Henry Moore statue.


The Little Owl near the Albert Memorial was on one of her favourite branches. When she is here, there is only one place you can see her from, under the next tree to the east.


The mating procedures of dragonflies are complicated and take a long time. The male of this pair of Black-Tailed Skimmers is right way up, and can fly the pair to another perch if necessary. They moved once while I was getting these shots.


A Buff-Tailed Bumblebee worked its way up the tall flower head of an acanthus.


Here are two interesting pictures taken by John Mealyer in Sardinia of Swallows feeding their young on telephone wires.


2 comments:

  1. Those shots of swallows feeding their chicks on telephone wires brought me back to my childhood. It was a very common sight in the small town I grew up in.

    I never thought ducklings would be so fast! Isn't it almost large enough as to be out of danger from gulls and crows?

    I didn't know that Grebes were able to catch damselflies. On the other hand, well done on the Whitethroat for catching the spider. Serves it right for hunting honey bees.

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    1. I don't think that duckling is large enough to be safe yet. On the other hand, it's possible to be modestly hopeful about the Pochard ducklings, though I didn't see them today.

      It's odd that this spider, which I had never seen before, should turn up twice in the space of a few days.

      I have seen a picture of a Little Grebe catching a dragonfly, a much swifter flyer than a damselfly.

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