Another wet start to the day, but it soon cleared up. The Robin in the corkscrew hazel in the Flower Walk surveyed his territory from a dripping twig.
A Wren came out on a branch near the bridge ...
... and a Great Tit looked for insects in the dead tree.
There was a ringed Starling on a table at the Dell restaurant. No hope of reading it as the agile bird whizzed around looking for scraps.
A Carrion Crow dunked a morsel of food in the fountain in the Rose Garden.
A Herring Gull danced to bring up worms in the Diana fountain enclosure. The close shot gives a clear view of its little pattering feet.
Two Black-Headed Gulls had a disagreement at the Vista.
There were Cormorants everywhere -- flying up the Serpentine ...
... fishing in the Italian Garden fountains ...
... and forcing the teenage Mute cygnets to share their island.
A brisk breeze got up, encouraging swans to fly. A headwind reduces the exertion of a long takeoff run.
A Canada Goose enjoyed a splashy wash.
The blond male Egyptian Goose at the Triangle car park has reclaimed his wandering mate, and was standing next to her in a proprietorial attitude. However, the intruding male was glowering at the pair from a short distance way and clearly planning something.
A Gadwall stood under the parapet of the Italian Garden. These sober-suited birds have quite bright ginger and white patches on their wings.
I am sure that a successful soap opera could be written about the Blond Egyptian trio.
ReplyDeleteGreat video of the Herring Gull doing the worm dance. I wonder how they came up with the technique. I wish gulls kept records of the species' great achievements.
It is very difficult to imagine how a Herring Gull invented the worm dance. All right, once one of them did it the behaviour would spread, and indeed it has to the other three gull species commonly seen in the park. But there seems to be no instinctive pattering behaviour of gulls that might have been rewarded with surfacing worms and would have become a habit. It looks, incredibly, like an imaginative leap which one would have supposed was beyond a gull's mind.
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