Friday 5 February 2021

A beautiful sunny morning, and the grass around the Ranger's Lodge garden is a carpet of snowdrops.

A pair of Rose-Ringed Parakeets inspected a possible nest hole.

A pair of Long-Tailed Tits were flying around a bush in the Rose Garden where they nested last year.

A Grey Heron supervised its mate building a nest.

A Robin found an ambitiously large worm in fallen leaves. Robins bite worms into shorter lengths so they can swallow them.

A Carrion Crow picked insects out of a rotten twig.

A Starling took advantage of an archangel at the top of the Albert Memorial.

One of the Peregrines was on the tower. I think it's the male but it's hard to tell from this angle, and it wouldn't turn round.

The Bar-Headed x Greylag hybrid was preening at the Lido.

A pair of Gadwalls got on with their quiet life, against a soundtrack of noisy geese.

The Red-Crested Pochard was under the dead willow nest to the Italian Garden. His Mallard mate was somewhere else, so there was no need for him to fluff his head up to impress her.

Black-Headed Gulls looked for worms on the edge of the temporary pond made by the floods in the Meadow.

Although it's wide it isn't deep. A policeman and his horse amused themselves by splashing through the middle.

The Serpentine Gallery is closed by the Great Panic,  so its deserted terrace is a good place to practise and film a little dance routine. They needed several takes to get it right.

2 comments:

  1. Ordinarily I would consider the dance amateur practice at best, but now it makes me very happy to see a handful of people out and about, enjoying freely the free air and moving joyfully without restraints.

    Gee, Robins are scary at close quarters.

    I like Gadwalls. They embody the beauty and charm of quietness and modesty.

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    1. Well, yes, those dancers aren't much good but it was fun to watch.

      The extreme close-up of the Robin was needed because the view was bisected by a horizontal twig just above the top of the cropped picture. Ordinarily I would have discarded it, but was impressed by the size of the worm.

      Very fond of Gadwalls too. They make Mallards look like yahoos in fancy dress.

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