The Blue Tit parent in the Flower Walk was waiting for me to start supplying pine nuts ...
... for a fledgling looking down hungrily from a higher twig.
A Herring Gull in the Italian Garden had killed a Feral Pigeon but had been frightened off the kill by people passing by.
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While it was waiting to go back it had a go at another pigeon, but missed. I think this is the gull we've seen in action at the Triangle car park.
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Our Tawny Owl hasn't been seen for a few days, so here to keep the owl count up is a picture taken by Caroline Reay of one she saw at Filey in Yorkshire.
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This Coot nest, built in the middle of the lake in about 4 feet of water, has already been washed away twice by the waves brought up by strong winds. It was a windy day and the nest was starting to rock. The Coots were doing their best to shore it up, but lost concentration and wasted time trying to decorate it with a snack packet which kept blowing away.
The nest near the Dell restaurant is in slightly shallower water and a has massive foundation of waterlogged branches, so it can ride out anything except a full gale.
Coots' taste in decoration is deplorable to human eyes, but it keeps them happy. This is the nest at the bridge.
The cygnet at the boathouse was wandering on the shore. It examined a moulted goose feather.
Mute Swans are, of course, not mute. They have a variety of calls, grunts and hisses. The female called the cygnet, which obediently came.
The four watching adults of the merged Canada Goose family saw dogs coming along the path and hurried their goslings to the edge of the water in case they needed to flee. The dogs were on leads and quite orderly, but you can't be too careful. They soon returned and started grazing again.
The most advanced of the goslings is beginning to get its adult head pattern.
The mother of the new Greylag goslings was worried by the calls of a nearby Lesser Black-Backed Gull.
A pair of Egyptian Geese looked concerned by their goslings being separated by the railings surrounding the Diana memorial fountain. Actually both adults and young were on the right side of the fence. The goslings in the enclosure were safe from dogs which aren't allowed inside, and protected from swooping gulls by being close to the railings. But if danger did threaten, their mother could call them back through the bars and the family could make a run for the lake only a few feet away.
The oldest Egyptian teenager has lost almost all its juvenile down and is looking very handsome.
A female Common Blue Damselfly sunned herself on the parapet of the Italian Garden.
A ladybird pupa was attached to a nettle leaf. I don't know its species, nor what the very small insect in the upper right corner of the picture is.
Update: Jim has identified the ladybird as a Harlequin -- which is to be expected, as they are now the commonest species in the park and the nettle is only a short way from the Queen's Temple where they overwinter in the ceiling. And the other insect is an aphid, quite likely a Nettle Aphid.
The ladybird pupa is a Harlequin, they are variable like the adults. The smaller insect is some kind of aphid, which looks like it has a drink ready for any passing ant. There is a Nettle Aphid as such, which varies in colour and can be that exact tone.
ReplyDeleteDid the swan make the single yelp as its beak opens? Not a sound I would have associated with them. Jim
Thanks for the information. Of course I suspected a Harlequin, but didn't know whether the dots on the pupa were in the same place as they would be in the emerging insect.
DeleteYes, the swan's beak opened just as it made that call. The video editing software I use is good at keeping the sound in sync with the image (some applications aren't). It's a pity that YouTube's buffering always messes up the first 15 seconds of any video, though the degradation is much less severe now that I have switched to 4K video -- indeed, that was my only reason for doing so, to the detriment of YT who now have to store much larger files.
I've always believed that if you close your eyes hissing swans sound like Alien!
ReplyDeleteI wish Coots were a more popular study subject among biologists. Their penchant for decoration would merit study, no kidding.
Tinúviel
Perhaps the sound of the Alien was based on an unfortunate encounter the film producer had had with a swan.
DeleteI have observed, if not exactly studied, Coot nest ornamentation. They like bright colours, with red the favourite, and metallic sheen such as you get with the aluminium-coated PVC film used for many snack packets. The most amazing example of the latter that I have ever seen was a Coot on the Grand Union Canal which had found a fallen, but still partly inflated, silver helium balloon and was trying to add it to the nest. It didn't get very far as the balloon kept blowing away. But, being a Coot, it went on and on trying.
My first guess is that the nest ornamentation has the goal of camouflage, or provides some such benefit. It seems some swans do it too with bright litter. It would be interesting to compare the success of adorned and unadorned nests. Coots will also use certain flowers; do these have an anti-parasitic benefit and could that also or alternatively be the reason behind the behaviour? Jim
DeleteWell, Coots have no intentions beyond food, sex, nest, nest building, and nurturing their young, and indeed it's hard to say how far any of these actually surface as conscious ideas in their little brains. Swans are a bit brighter but again it is mostly a matter of instinctive drives. Yes, they love bright and glittery rubbish, but this has been available only for a few decades and it's hard to estimate what role it has had in their evolution over this short time. Probably there is a small but perfectly formed PhD thesis waiting to be written on the matter (but not by me).
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