Sunday 18 July 2021

A hot day kept the small birds sheltering in the bushes, though I managed to lure out the Coal Tit near the Albert Memorial with a bribe of a pine nut ...


... and Ahmet Amerikali got a shot of a Wren from a family beside the Long Water.


One of the familiar Jays was on a branch with its crest raised.


It was soon joined by its mate and a young one that pestered its parents for food.


The two young Carrion Crows in the Italian Garden were making a racket on top of an urn.


One of them can now successfully shell a peanut, though not before it had spent a lot of time nagging its parent to open the nut for it.


Feral Pigeons fought under a holly tree near the bridge. They don't deserve their reputation as doves of peace.


There is a new Grey Heron chick in a nest on the island, a very late arrival but the herons here have bred late before. The nest can't be seen from any angle, but the young bird could be heard clacking its beak to beg for food. A parent flew into the nest tree ...


... and the teenagers from the nest in the adjoining tree were looking annoyed by their noisy new neighbours.


While the Great Crested Grebes from the nest at the bridge were away with their chick, two Mallards occupied it -- it was the mother with her nearly fully grown teenager.


Then it was taken over by a Coot, perhaps one that had originally built the nest before the grebes stole it.


But the grebes successfully reclaimed it. This shot was taken from the other side of the bridge, where the view is slightly less obstructed.


A grebe carried a fish to the nest behind the baskets at the island, so evidently a chick has hatched.


For a couple of days there has been a lone Mute cygnet at the Lido. I don't know who its parents are. It's not like Mute Swans to neglect their offspring.


A metallic green beetle scurried across the path near the Albert Memorial. I couldn't identify it from a web search. There are more species of beetle than of any other kind of insect.


Update: Conehead 54 thinks it's a Strawberry Seed Beetle, Harpalus rufipes.

6 comments:

  1. I hope it's not that its parents are dead. It can feed for itself, can it?

    I can tell that the young Jay is avenging every possible instance of harassment you have suffered on the part of the adult Jays.

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    1. Dead swans would have been noticed and I would have heard. The cygnet can certainly feed itself, whatever has happened.

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    2. Do you hear about dead cormorants? I saw one between the two small boathouses around 20:30 on the evening of the big football match and was intrigued because I’d never seen anything but healthy cormorants around the lake, and couldn’t imagine what had done for it. At a distance it looked like a floating log but when I got close I saw a cormorant neck and head stretched out under the water ... going nowhere.

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    3. I heard about that but didn't see it. No one knows what killed it.

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  2. As you suggest a lot of beetles-c4,000 in the UK. I'm not 100% certain as I'm not a coleopterist but think your beetle is Harpalus rufipes, the Strawberry Seed Beetle; one of the carabids (ground beetles). The legs look quite distinctive!

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