In hot weather the small birds in the Flower Walk have more insects than they can eat, and aren't interested in pine nuts. But when the weather cools down they flock out. Here are a Blue Tit, several Great Tits and a Robin coming down. Near the end you can hear the Robin ticking irritably, as it resents sharing its tree with other birds.
At the foot of Buck Hill there is a small clump of hawthorn trees, one of which is dead and another mostly dead. The dead trees seem to attract as many insects as the live ones, if not more. A mixed flock of Long-Tailed Tits ...
... and Blue Tits were taking advantage of them.
Across the path a Rose-Ringed Parakeet ripped clusters of fruit off a hornbeam tree, nibbled vaguely at them, and dropped them. Just a few parakeets can completely strip a tree in this wasteful way.
Only one Little Owl was visible today, the male at the Round Pond. He gave me a look of weary tolerance as I arrived yet again to photograph him. He doesn't know that he is admired around the world.
The Peregrines were on the barracks tower. The female was in the middle of preening and looked disarranged.
The Grey Heron at the Lido restaurant was next to a table trying to look sweet (not easy for a heron) so that the occupants would feed it. They did.
A heron in the Dell had managed to land in the middle of a Japanese maple tree. They are extremely good at obstructed landings.
The three Great Crested Grebe chicks at the bridge were having a siesta.
When they woke up and went off to pester their parents a Pochard occupied the nest. I'm sure the adult grebes had no difficulty in dislodging it.
The four chicks were being fed by their parents near Peter Pan.
A detail of the previous shot.
The invading Mute Swans were dozing and preening on the gravel strip.
The single cygnet from the island had wandered off by itself again and was at the Dell restaurant.
A Brimstone butterfly drank from an ivy-leafed geranium in a planter in the Italian Garden.
There was a small Crane Fly with spotted wings on the stonework. There are hundreds of species of Crane Fly and I have no hope of identifying it. A pity I didn't get a better picture, I should have taken more care.
This notice is regularly repaired when it wears out. The ground, not so much.
Always hits the dopamine pleasuring sensor, hand-feeding birds.
ReplyDeleteSean
How can the ground be repaired?
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised the robin was ticking at the great tits. Great tits are not to be trifled with.
Beautiful and modest, as beautiful on the inside as he is on the outside, that owl.
Tinúviel
The ground was trodden down by the feet of thousands of people feeding the parakeets over several years. Sometimes there were 200 people present at a time. This compacted the already dense clay soil, making it completely impervious so that the area degenerated into a swamp. The park management's response to this was predictable: fence it off, claim that the ground was 'under repair', and do nothing. Earlier this year a faint gestures was made: schoolchildren were brought in to plant a few crabapple saplings. Totally neglected since then, these have died.
DeleteThere's a belligerent Blue Tit in that bit of the Flower Walk that hurls itself at the much larger Robin when it's on my hand. The Robin can bully the Great Tits but is nonplussed by these furious attacks.
I don't think you can make friends with a wild owl, but at least he puts up with me most of the time.