Thursday 5 September 2019

We've had a lot of pictures and video of Great Crested Grebes lately, and I hope you're not getting bored of them. Anyway, their very late breeding season is the most interesting thing happening in tge park at an otherwise slow time.

Here are two videos of the them feeding their chicks with fish caught in the perch hatchery at the bridge, this one shot from the shore.


And here they are seen from the bridge parapet.


The very small chick from the west end of the island was out in the middle of the lake. Being able to dive like lightning, they are reasonably safe from the swooping Herring Gulls.


Not so the Moorhen chicks. Virginia sent this dramatic but gruesome picture of one of the chicks at the bridge being swallowed by a young Herring Gull.


Two more fine pictures from Virginia: two small Egyptian goslings striking a symmetrical pose on the shore of the Serpentine ...


... and a lone Mallard duckling on the Round Pond which has survived against all odds in this very exposed place.


A pair of Gadwalls cruised under a fountain in the Italian Garden ...


... while some large carp idled beneath them.


The resident Grey Heron in the Dell stared into the stream with endless patience. Most of the carp here are too big for it to eat, but it must be finding some fish of a suitable size.


The hawthorn hedge at the top of Buck Hill nest to the road is home to half a dozen Blackbirds.


The Song Thrush at the northwest corner of the bridge has returned after being driven away by gardening work.


On the other side of the lake, a Dunnock stared up from under a bush.


A Starling on a table at the Dell restaurant shone in the sunlight.


A Migrant Hawker dragonfly hunted around the planters in the Italian Garden.

4 comments:

  1. I will never grow bored of your pictures and videos of Grebe families. They are really beautiful birds.
    I saw three juvenile Grebes at Crystal Palace Park a few days ago.

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  2. My favourite birds along with Little Owls.

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  3. Who could get bored of pretty little stripey heads and their loving, doting, devoted parents? I could spend hours looking at them. How lucky we are that we get to see them in various activities and stages of development, even if vicariously.

    That Starling looks splendid. Such unassuming birds, and yet so resplendent.

    (poor Moorhen chick...)

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    1. I think Starlings are aware of how fine they look, from the way the dominant ones strut about and display themselves on twigs to sing.

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