Monday 16 November 2020

A particularly brave Carrion Crow managed to snatch the pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gull's lunch several times.

When I went past again soon afterwards, he was hunting again. Once he caught three pigeons in a day, and ate very little of the last one.

Crows and Herring Gulls were eating some salad that someone had dumped, which seemed surprising as neither of them cares much for salad. Closer inspection showed that there was cracked wheat in it, and it was this that had attracted them.

A Cormorant bent down from a chain to drink.

The eldest Great Crested Grebe chicks are now indistinguishable from adults in winter plumage and it's impossible to say how many have survived, especially as grebes often fly in and out. But here is one of the youngest, still with a trace of juvenile stripes.

The Moorhen parents in the Italian Garden stood on a rail with one of the teenagers from their last brood.

The Black Swan has come back to the Round Pond again after a brief excursion to the Serpentine.


Canada Geese flew up the Serpentine ...

... and Greylags came out of the Diana fountain enclosure, where over a hundred had been grazing.

The newly sown grass under the Henry Moore sculpture has come up, and the resident pair of Egyptian Geese have returned to eat it.

A male and a female Tufted Duck dived in the Long Water. It's much easier to film the male under water, as you can see his white sides.

All the Pochards -- over sixty of them -- have left the Long Water except for the one resident drake who stays all the year round. Normally they remain here the whole winter. I have no idea what caused them to leave.

A Robin posed prettily on a twig at the foot of Buck Hill ...

... and a flight of Long-Tailed Tits went by.

4 comments:

  1. I am making it a habit of changing my desktop wallpaper to the daily Robin picture. Can't get enough!

    It looks like Pigeon Killer knows when he is being outsmarted.

    I have high hopes that many Grebe chicks did survive the summer. I have no evidence, but I prefer to believe that.

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    1. It's absolutely necessary to have frequent pictures of Robins. Also Long-Tailed Tits.

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  2. I was surprised how tolerant the killer gull was with the Crow, making little effort to chase it off.

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    Replies
    1. He seems to be getting generally less aggressive towards other birds (except pigeons of course).

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