Rose-Ringed Parakeets are not yet fully adapted to the English climate, and spend cold nights sheltering in holes. A pair examined a suitable place in a plane tree. It will probably be used as a nest hole in spring.
A Robin in the Rose Garden had to raise its voice to compete with gruesome Christmas songs coming from the Winter Wonderland.
There were two other Robins in the Rose Garden, making the point that Christmas belongs to them and not to some huckster with a cheesy CD.
This Robin in the Flower Walk comes out to be given pine nuts, but hasn't yet dared to come to my hand.
The young Grey Wagtail that visits the Italian Garden fountains is remarkably calm about people coming quite close.
But it has been photographed and filmed it from the moment it was hatched at the Lido last summer.
Long-Tailed Tits are not shy. They simply ignore humans.
I still haven't been able to photograph the Mistle Thrush in the rowan tree eating fruit. Usually Mistle Thrushes gather in a tree near the rowan and then make a united raid on it, cramming themselves with fruit within a minute and then flying away to digest it. But this solitary thrush stays in the tree the whole time, mostly doing nothing.
One of the Grey Herons on the island was in a nest for the second day running. But it would be foolish to suppose that the pair were serious about nesting. They can hang around a nest for months before deciding to breed.
The horse chestnut tree near the Serpentine Gallery that recently broke in half has become a heron lookout post.
A Black-Headed Gull found what was evidently a 'rat-tailed maggot', a hoverfly larva with a long siphon for breathing underwater. The larva is larger than the adult, probably Eristalis tenax with is common in the park and about the size of a housefly, and its siphon may be a couple of inches long. But it looks huge because it's covered in algae. The gull flew away with it to peck off the weed in a secluded place.
A pair of Great Crested Grebes displayed on the Serpentine.
A Gadwall drake looked for food in fallen leaves at the Dell restaurant terrace.
Greylag Geese headed away in line astern.
A Mute Swan looked most undignified heaving and flopping into a fountain in the Italian Garden.
I can't believe that swans can be as inelegant and clumsy as ordinary mortals.
ReplyDeleteThere is something deeply symbolic in the Robin trying to make itself heard against the dreadful commercial carol.
Lovely, lovely Robin pictures!
I'm still hoping to get a video of a swan getting out of the fountain. It does this by running full tilt into the the kerb, which is about 40cm high above the water level, and bouncing off the angled stone. Somehow its feathers protect it from injury during this dreadful procedure. Hard to catch on video as it happens without notice, and only once.
DeletePerhaps you can have too many Robin pictures, but they presented themselves so they got photographed.