I couldn't find the teenage Little Owl at the Round Pond despite repeated visits, but Goizane saw him fly into a small lime tree and, after a good deal of searching, we managed to find a gap in the dense leaves through which he could be seen.
The owl at the Speke obelisk was out briefly but I missed him.
Constant walking repeatedly between the two places has attracted a family of Magpies that expect to be fed. A carefully thrown peanut will bring one down in a place where the sunshine shows off the beautiful blue and green iridescence on its wings and tail.
There are also many Wrens in the lime trees.
Jackdaws slowly expanding their range in Kensington Gardens are now regularly seen on the Henry Moore sculpture, and there is a small colony in Hyde Park.
After they left the park in 1968, when the elm disease killed the trees where they nested, they didn't return till 2014 when a few appeared in the northwest corner of Kensington Gardens. They were extremely shy and you couldn't get within 50 yards of them. But now they have gained in both confidence and numbers and are holding their own against the Carrion Crows. It's worth noting that in Richmond Park Jackdaws have completely taken over the corvid scene and there are many hundreds of them, but only a few crows.
A Blackbird in the Dell looked out nervously from a branch.
Grey Herons get a hard time from other birds. These two were being harassed by Black-Headed Gulls and the worst of all their enemies, a Carrion Crow.
The pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gull had finished his lunch and flown away, leaving the scanty remains for a young Herring Gull.
There was a full house of Cormorants on the posts at the Serpentine island ...
... but that is nothing to the numbers on the Long Water, with 22 on the posts at Peter Pan, 10 in the fallen poplar tree at the Vista, 6 on the raft ...
... and one standing on a little stump as there was nowhere else for it to go.
The new pair of Mute Swans were in the Italian Garden ...
... but there were no other swans on the Long Water at all. Since the pair with five teenage cygnets flew in the situation has been most confused, and even the dominant pair on the Long Water have been shaken up. There was chasing on the Serpentine ...
... but it was impossible to tell who was who and we shall have to wait till things settle down to find how the territories have been rearranged.
Sunlight brought out the dark green iridescence on the head of a Shoveller drake as he revolved on the Long Water.
A Gadwall drake fed in his own way, reaching down to pluck algae in the shallow water at the edge of the lake.
Two of the four teenage Mallards were occupying the Coot nest at the bridge.
There have been many books in the social interactions of corvids, geese and gulls. I wonder why no one has apparently consider the idea of studying the social interactions of swans, which are every bit as appealing.
ReplyDeleteWeird that Jackdaws should have been so gun-shy in the beginning. Were they hunted, or harmed in the place from where they came?
Tinúviel
Perhaps it's because the bigger the bird, the more shocking its fights are for humans to watch.
DeleteI think the returning Jackdaws just had the normal shyness of wild birds. We bribed them into trusting us. Paul and I used to spin whole digestive biscuits at them like frisbees, because nothing else could be thrown far enough to reach them. They soon got the idea that the missiles were edible. Now they trot out and stand in front of you looking expectant.