Sunday 18 October 2020

A flash of white wingtip in a gull chase showed that the first Common Gull has returned to the Serpentine for the winter.

Later it obligingly posed for its portrait on the plastic buoys at the Lido.

There were also a few on the Round Pond, which for some reason they prefer to the main lake.

A young Herring Gull ate oatmeal. Of the strange foods that people bring to the park to feed the birds, this is one of the better kinds and greatly preferable to bread.

Cormorants jostled each other and dried their wings on the wooden posts at the island.

A Grey Heron preened in front of two Japanese maples in their brilliant autumn colours in the Dell.

Some of the Tufted drakes are now back in their smart breeding plumage.

The Red Crested Pochard drake and his Mallard mate were in the Italian Garden. I never expected this affair to last but they've been together for two years now.

The Coot which built a nest at Peter Pan at the most absurd time seems determined to go ahead with it.

A Rose-Ringed Parakeet tore open the seed case of a sweet chestnut in the tree near the leaf yard where the Little Owls used to nest.

Jackdaws have the owls' hole now.

These owls are gone, but the pair on Buck Hill are still a going concern although their former hole seems to have been abandoned. Today a Mistle Thrush was looking for insects in it. There were several other Mistle Thrushes here, evidently recently arrived autumn migrants.

On the ground below a pair of Magpies had a peanut each.

A Sunday with reasonable weather brought a lot of people to the Lido restaurant, and the Starlings were waiting for a chance of scraps.

I know we've had videos of Starlings washing before, but their frantic splashing is hard to resist.

A moment of afternoon sunshine lit two Long-Tailed Tits in a passing flock.

2 comments:

  1. What a nice and well-behaved Gull, to pose for its portrait so. I got distracted by the pretty Grebe tidying its feathers in the first picture, though!

    Of course the Coot will go ahead. They don't know the meaning of defeat, and of common sense. Perhaps that's the key to success.

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    Replies
    1. Coots are like evolution. They have no idea of where they are going but can't stop, and somehow on the whole it's successful.

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