A sunny day brought out both the Little Owls at the Round Pond. Both the female ...
... and the male moved around the horse chestnut trees near the nest several times during the course of the day.
The male appears first in this video.
A Goldcrest sang in a yew tree near Peter Pan ...
... and a Wren stared out from the next bush.
A single Goldfinch twittered in a treetop near the Speke obelisk.
The local Blue Tit, apparently another single, is getting more confident and came to my hand for the first time.
A Wood Pigeon strolled along a herbaceous border in the Rose Garden ...
... where a Honeybee browsed on a pink hyacinth.
The pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gull and his mate have been together on the Serpentine for several days. She's normally quite independent but the breeding season brings them together. I think they may nest on the roof of the Dell restaurant, but this can't be seen from the ground.
One of the young Grey Herons was in the nest. It got bored with being alone ...
... and flew down to look for its sibling, landing neatly on a post as if it had been doing that for years.
A pair of Great Crested Grebes on the Serpentine prowled around in a defensive attitude. The nearest grebe was a hundred yards away but you can't be too careful.
Another pair is nesting in the reeds opposite Peter Pan. A few days ago I said that our grebes didn't have the knack of nesting in reeds, but this pair seem to be doing all right and have managed to cut down some reed stems to use in constructing their nest.
There was a single grebe on the near side of the lake, clearly a male. He may have a mate somewhere else on the Long Water. The number of grebes in the park is increasing from a recent low of just three pairs.
There are clumps of sprouting wheat in the lake, thrown in at the end of the celebration of Nowruz, the Zoroastrian New Year at the spring solstice. An Egyptian Goose poked dubiously at one. None of the waterfowl seem to like it much.
A squirrel dug perilously close to the fox's earth in the bushes below the Triangle car park. Luckily the fox seemed to be elsewhere.
It was certainly a day of two halves. While birding my Sunday patch in the morning it was cool & grey, but later in the day pleasantly warm in the sunshine as I sat reading in the garden where I had my first Small white, a Dark-edged Beefly, plenty of Hairy-footed Flower Bees & a couple of hoverfly species.
ReplyDeleteGreat shots of the Little Owl in the sunshine & wonderful capture of the Goldcrest.
Hope your Great Crested Grebes are successful with their nests.
First Brimstone butterflies in the park today, rather late as usually they're the first species seen.
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