Saturday 20 February 2021

A Chaffinch sang in a tree in the Rose Garden.


There was also a Blackbird looking for worms, with an unexpected musical accompaniment from some rollerbladers in the Serpentine Road.


The first Greenfinches this year: a pair dimly seen in a yew tree beside the path north of Peter Pan.


A Long-Tailed Tit waited to visit the feeder in the Dell.


The female Peregrine was on the tower briefly several times ...


... often flying out and circling over Hyde Park.


A Grey Heron looked down at the chick in the nest. I still haven't got a clear sight of it.


A young Herring Gull dived into the Long Water, but all it came up with was a bit of plastic bag.


A Black-Headed Gull looked down apprehensively at two Moorhens, wondering if it was going to get knocked off the post. But the Moorhens were too busy washing and preening to bother with it.


The whole of last year's family of Moorhens were together in a planter in the Italian Garden.


A Coot and a Black-Headed Gull were at cross purposes at Peter Pan, the Coot trying to build a nest and the gull pulling it to pieces to find insects.


A pair of Great Crested Grebes hung around the Coots' nest under the willow near the bridge, hoping for a chance to steal a nest much better than they could build themselves. This trick does sometimes work, but needs constant vigilance to keep the Coots from taking the nest back.


A little fleet of Tufted drakes followed a solitary female, then started diving..


News of more broods of Egyptian Geese: Joan Chatterley found five goslings in St James's Park ...


... and James Norton found five in Ravenscourt Park.


No sign of any here yet,

4 comments:

  1. Gosh. I thought they had somehow got some sense into their thick heads, but there they are again, piling up poor doomed goslings.

    I am disappointed in the Moorhens. I was expecting a proper senf-off for the Gull.

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    1. In both Egyptians and Coots the population is steadily increasing. Their breeding strategy (or lack of it) works, so there is no reason to abandon it.

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  2. Had an email today (25/02/2021) that the Black-headed Gull with the orange ring '2V11' that featured in your blog on 10/12/2020 was re-sighted this morning at Katingsiel, Nordfriesland, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. This is 679Km ENE of the Serpentine. I wonder if he will stay in that area to breed or move still further east. Hopefully he will return safely to the Serpentine next winter.

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    1. Many thanks for the information. Will put this on the blog tomorrow.

      Today I saw a Carrion Crow with a British metal ring in the park, which seemed unusual. The number was FJ10039. I reported it to Euring, really just out of curiosity to see who was bothering to ring crows. But it might be one of yours.

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