The male Little Owl at the Round Pond has been hard to see recently, but this afternoon he showed up in a horse chestnut tree.
The young Starlings are now independent and were scavenging at the Lido restaurant as if they had been doing it for years.
A fine picture by Tom of a young Coal Tit in a dead hawthorn tree in the Flower Walk.
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Seven Coot chicks in a planter in the Italian Garden fountains were fed by their parents.
The six chicks at the bridge were wandering all over the place but I managed to get one shot of all of them in the nest.
A pair of Tufted Ducks dived for food at the edge of the Serpentine.
The four Mallard ducklings near the Lido were on their own again. Their mother is having a very hard time evading the lust-crazed drakes.
A Greylag Goose chewed a strawberry experimentally, didn't like it, and spat it out.
Three Canada x Greylag hybrids have turned up for the moulting season and were at the island.
The eleven Egyptian goslings sprawled over the path. They are quite calm about people, but as soon as a dog appears in the distance their mother makes a tremendous racket to call them into the water.
The seven were also basking on the edge of the lake.
A Speckled Wood butterfly perched on a lime leaf sticky with honeydew from aphids.
I think this dragonfly is a Black-Tailed Skimmer with its blue powdery coating very patchy.
There was also an Emperor in the Italian Garden but I couldn't get a decent picture.
A female Blue-Tailed Damselfly was well camouflaged on the lichen-crusted kerb of an Italian Garden pool. Females come in a wide variety of colours, unlike the uniformly black and blue males.
The Stachys byzantina in the Rose Garden is alive with bees. This is a Common Carder.
I thought this ginger bee on a bramble flower was also a Common Carder when I was photographing it, but its abdomen isn't hairy enough. Conehead 54 reckons it's a slightly unusual-looking Honeybee.
Sunlight picked out a small hoverfly under a dark tree by the Dell. it looks like a Eupeodes species, maybe E. luniger though the characteristic forward-curving tips of the stripes aren't very clear in this picture.
Lovely dragonfly imagine. I’m going to visit the park tomorrow Ralph in the morning by around 11/11:30am. Shall I meet you at the flower walk?
ReplyDeleteSean
Sorry, will be in a hurry tomorrow.
DeleteGood news about the dragonflies! I still have not seen any however. Which plane tree does the Owl seem to perch in all the time now?
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Theodore
For dragonflies the Italian Garden is the best place -- look over the parapet on to the lake, and also over the pools -- and I have also heard that the allotment on Buck Hill is good though a single visit didn't produce anything. The Black-Tailed Skimmer was at the top of the Dell, which is unusual.
DeleteThe Little Owl was not in a plane tree and there are no planes particularly near. As I said above, it was in a horse chestnut.
So although some birds like strawberry it's not necessarily a hit with Greylags, though they will brave the spikes to get at raw sweet chestnuts. There's just no accounting for taste. Jim
ReplyDeleteI'd say that most birds don't like strawberries. They are initially attracted by the colour but then find them disappointingly watery.
ReplyDeleteYes, an immature Black-tailed Skimmer.
ReplyDeleteThe bee below the Common Carder looks like a Honey Bee (they can be quite variable) as it has the long banana-shaped cell on the leading edge of the wing.
Agree a Eupeodes sp.
Thank you. Useful information about the cell on the wing, something to look out for.
DeleteLet's hope luck holds out for the goslings, despite today's losses. It has to be a matter of luck - I can't see what's the difference with last year, or the year previous, to account for their higher numbers.
ReplyDeleteFunny how most birds don't seem to like strawberries, considering how palatable they are to humans.
Tinúviel
It seems that most birds don't like watery things. They hate salad but if these is mayonnaise on it they peck that off. They like greasy food full of calories to fuel their fierce metabolism.
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