A young Magpie pestered a parent for food, pecked petulantly at a leaf, and then walked over and seized the parent's peanut.
I've photographed this Carrion Crow before digging in the mud at the edge of the Dell, always in the same place. The mud has dried up now, but the crow is still finding food, and I still can't see what it is.
Small songbirds are now hard to see among the leaves, but various species of finch remain visible on bare twigs at the tops of trees. A Chaffinch sang near the Speke obelisk.
The male Little Owl at the Round Pond was annoyed at being disturbed and gave me a severe stare.
The corner of the island is the invisible frontier between two pairs of Great Crested Grebes and there are often disputes. The pair on the right, having successfully shooed off the others, congratulated each other.
A Coot is building a nest on the wire mesh barring entry to a boathouse, and by looking through the building you can see how it's attached. Coots push large twigs through the mesh until they jam, making a solid foundation to build on.
It's this skill which is lacking in grebes, whose latest attempt to fix a nest to the wire basket at the island has inevitably failed again.
The different sized Coot chicks at the bridge were in a heap in the nest.
A Moorhen sat on a rock in the Dell stream. It's the Moorhens' favourite resting place but they keep getting pushed off by Mallards.
A Mallard at the Triangle car park rested peacefully with two ducklings ...
... but a third was being devoured by a Herring Gull.
The arrival of hundreds of Greylag and Canada Geese to moult on the Serpentine results in a terrible mess on the edge of the water. The sweeper truck goes along every morning but can't possibly keep up with the determined efforts of the geese.
The seven Egyptian goslings, now quite large, cruised briskly up the shore.
The eleven were spread out along the other side of the lake. One reason for the success of these two families is that they stay on opposite sides, and the lake is wide enough to keep them from fighting each other.
A Buff-Tailed Bumblebee browed on a foxglove in the Dell ...
... and a Common Carder explored a delphinium in the Rose Garden.
The open grassland east of the Round Pond is full of Common Blue Damselflies. I think this one is an immature male that hasn't turned blue yet.
There are also plenty of Speckled Wood butterflies.
Cool shot of the Little Owl peeking itself out of the tree.
ReplyDeleteSean
The pair of LBB Gulls on top of my building have hatched 3 chicks, as far as I can see. Today , I saw a single crow attack them : but several more gulls joined our pair in defence. Have never before seen that. I can't even be sure if they were all LBBs. The crow was very persistent, being under barrage from 5 or 6 swooping gulls it still tried to get to the nest, where one of the pair (the mother?) hunkered over the nest. At last the crow fled,
ReplyDeletethe other gulls flew off and there remained only the pair, the second one resuming its vigilant place by the nest . It really looked like a dogfight.
What a fascinating sight. I didn't know gulls were capable of communal defence- they always surprise.
DeleteTinúviel
Now I'm wondering : did the others just join in because they enjoy a fight with a crow?
DeleteThere's a steady constant hatred between big gulls and crows. Perhaps the other gulls joined in out of hatred for crows rather than to defend their colleague.
DeleteI had a young Magpie behaving exactly the same way today under my window: it was begging, fluttering its wings, pecking at a leaf, and finally pestering a parent, which was coolly going about its business.
ReplyDeleteTinúviel
I get adult Magpies fluttering at me to be fed. Female Magpies do it to their mates to ensure that they will be fed while nesting. But I have been reliably assured that one of the Magpies that flutters at me is male. It seems to be a universal signal.
DeleteThe Great Crested Grebe territorial behaviour footage is quite extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteSean