You have to look carefully to see anything in this video, but the new Grey Heron chick is just beginning to put its head above the edge of the nest.
A Cormorant showed off the different colours of its feathers on a post.
With Egyptian Geese, the different wing colours make a surprising contrast.
The lonely Black Swan was still closely pursuing a Mute Swan.
The Mute Swans were feeling the onset of spring, and courting ...
... and chasing each other.
A Pochard drake at the Vista had a dirty face from dabbling in the mud.
Two Gadwall drakes and a female cruised around in one of the Italian Garden fountain pools.
A Coot was starting to build a nest in a hopeless place on the edge of the Dell restaurant terrace. When I passed a second time it had already given up.
One of the reasons why the Coots' nest on the post at Peter Pan keeps disappearing is that a Black-Headed Gull picks it to pieces looking for insects.
A Black-Headed Gull had won a large piece of bread and was having difficulty swallowing it. It could have gone under a bench and pecked it into smaller bits, but it's in the nature of gulls to gulp down everything at once before another gull steals it.
The female Peregrine perched on the tower for a few minutes before flying away.
A Goldcrest appeared unexpectedly out of a bramble patch near the Vista, a place where I've never seen or hear one before.
The Blue Tit near the Italian Garden came out several times to ask for a pine nut.
The Chaffinches in the park suffer sadly from scaly growths on their feet, caused by a viral papilloma. It doesn't kill them, but it makes them quite lame. Young birds seem unaffected but I think they all get it eventually.
Poor thing. Scaly feet seem to afflict all finches. Canary birds must be medicated specifically to prevent it in old age.
ReplyDeleteIt may be said that heron chicks have a face only a mother could love, but how glad we are to see the little head briefly popping out.
If the second heron nest at the west end of the island succeeds, we'll get a better view because it's quite low.
DeleteYes managed to see the Heron chick-but does require careful viewing!
ReplyDeleteSome handsome birds today with the Cormorant, Egyptian Geese with wings open, mixed swans & the Pochard.
On my local walk I saw the pair of Peregrines socially distanced on Ealing Hospital but a bit later one of the birds flew over me at Warren Farm & they look so much more exciting in flight than hunched up like old men on the building.
Peregrine pairs look as if they've just had a quarrel and are sulking.
DeleteLove the cormorant picture!
ReplyDeleteInteresting how 'black' birds are actually all sorts of colours.
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