After a cold night the Long Water was partly frozen. Black-Headed Gulls gathered on the ice.
Some of them played with bits of twig.
A flock of Long-Tailed Tits passed on their endless hunt for insects.
Redwings hunted under a tree on the south side of the Serpentine. They're waiting to go on to the ruined grass where the Winter Wasteland has been, but the site is still not clear.
One of them found a worm and strained to pull it up.
Both Peregrines were on the barracks tower.
A few moments of weak sunlight caused one of them to fly up to the top to make the most of it.
All three Grey Heron nests are still permanently occupied.
A Magpie turned over fallen leaves.
There was a Carrion Crow with a ring at the Dell restaurant. It was expecting to be fed and came right up, though it should have learnt that if you get too close to humans you might end up wearing an ankle tag for the rest of your life.
A Grey Wagtail hunted along the edge of the terrace.
A Shoveller drake preened. His mate gave him an irritable peck and went off for a wash.
This video was shot right after the one of the Grey Wagtail, and you can hear it call as it flies away.
The Mute Swans in the Italian Garden strutted around as if they owned the place -- which in swan terms they do.
One of the teenage Great Crested Grebes preened at the outflow of the Serpentine.
The number of Cormorants is falling as they have eaten most of the fish, but there were still three on the raft on the Long Water.
At the Henry Moore sculpture, a browsing rabbit noticed something and stood up to watch it, but realised it wasn't a threat and went back to feeding.
As darkness fell, Starlings came together to roost in a tree.
Great shot of the Redwing with the worm!
ReplyDeleteA bit motion blurred, but it was a good moment and one can be too fussy about technical quality. It shows how small Redwings are. A Blackbird would have got the worm up without exertion.
DeleteShould there be a pic of the ringed crow? And presumably you didn't happen to see Matt Hancock taking his "unauthorised" post-jog swim? Jim
ReplyDeleteYes, thank you. I don't know how that picture fell out after I'd put it in, but Blogger has strange glitches.
DeleteNo, I didn't see Matt Hancock. By the way, he is NOT a relative. It's a common enough surname.
I was going to ask, as well!
DeleteIncredible picture of the Redwing hauling the worm out. The effort of pulling is truly noticeable.
Very glad to see that some other Gulls are fond of playing as well, even though they cannot hope to achieve the level of playfulness of Herring Gulls.
Perhaps the Crow believes a little bit of metal may even lure innocent bystanders into giving it food. "See poor suffering ringed me, now give me food as reparation for what your fellow human did".
Perhaps the play of Herring Gulls is more noticeable only because they are bigger and have bigger toys. I often see Black-Headed Gulls, especially young ones, messing around with twigs and leaves.
DeleteBlogger is not working at all well at the moment, and simply assembling a blog with pictures and video in the right place and fully working is a daily battle. I have complained loudly and often to Google but it takes them months, even years, to fix faults.
Super Redwing worm shot Ralph.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Delete