Saturday 4 April 2020

Usually the gas lamp at the back of the Lido numbered 76 has a Blue Tit nesting in it every year. But when I passed by there was a Wren singing on the crossbar.


It flew into the top of the cast iron post and went in through the hole. It must be nesting here. No bird larger than a Blue Tit can get into these holes, but a Wren is smaller.


The Long-Tailed Tit sitting in the nest in the Rose Garden was looking out of the entrance.


A Chiffchaff sang in a nearby treetop.


Although it was a beautiful sunny day there was no sign of any of the Little Owls. But there was a Treecreeper on the oak near the Albert Memorial ...


... and a Mistle Thrush on the next tree.


A Magpie washed in the little pool at the top of the Dell waterfall. They wash, shake themselves dry, and preen before washing again, repeating the cycle several times.


Several Jays followed me around the Long Water touting for peanuts.


One of the adult Grey Herons was with the two chicks in the nest.


There were few people in the park over the week, so most of the Herring Gulls left too in search of better pickings elsewhere. But they seem to know when it's the weekend and more people will be out, and today there were about fifty of them on the Serpentine.


Every year a pair of Great Crested Grebes make a nest in a fallen poplar tree on the Long Water. Here they are just starting to lay bits of weed across a branch to provide a base on which twigs can be lodged.


A Moorhen poked around in the small waterfall in the Dell.


The Egyptian Geese have managed to keep their last surviving gosling for another day.


A pair of Gadwalls cruised on the sunlit water of the Serpentine.


Tom, stuck at home, got a picture of a Buzzard circling high over his back garden.

4 comments:

  1. School where I taught had gulls every day at 11.00 (break) and 1.00 (lunch) but they never turned up at weekends and holidays.

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    Replies
    1. They are uncommonly clever birds, right up there with corvids and parrots.

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    2. They even know the exact day and time people take the trash out to stage a raid. Way cleverer than they are reputed to be. Probably raven-clever levels.

      Look at the teeny tiny Long Tailed Tit sitting pretty in her nest! What could be lovelier?

      That's a very handsome Buzzard.

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    3. I took the picture of the Long-Tailed Tit without realising. I was just pointing the camera at the hole and firing off half a dozen shots just in case something showed, and there she was in two of them, of which I published the better.

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