After a chilly start the sunshine was quite warm. The Little Owl at the Round Pond came out on a branch of the horse chestnut tree.
Long-Tailed Tits ranged through the small hawthorns below.
A Robin in the Flower Walk emerged from the top of a yew hedge.
In the Rose Garden the male Chaffinch ...
... and his mate came out to be fed.
A Wood Pigeon took it easy under a tree.
There was only one young Grey Heron in the nest on the island, with the other two wandering through the bushes below. So far none of them has come over to the shore.
The odd-coloured Lesser Black-Backed Gull is well settled at the Dell restaurant, at least when Pigeon Eater is away. It shows no sign of wanting to eat pigeons. The pigeons know this and are happy to let it walk among them.
There are still only a few Common Gulls on the Round Pond. Numbers build up over the autumn, and usually there are about 50 by midwinter.
The four Little Grebes were diving busily in various parts of the pond.
The Great Crested Grebe chick from the nest on the island went over to wake its mother and get her fishing again.
They were monetarily disturbed by a Canada Goose chasing off a rival.
The two foxes in the Dell have a well hidden hole in the bushes on the slope that is the back wall of the big earth dam holding in the Serpentine.
A Buff-Tailed Bumblebee, a Honeybee and a Common Carder browsed on Michaelmas daisies in the Rose Garden.
There was also a Small White butterfly.
A Tapered Dronefly fed on another clump of daisies.
Fairy Ring mushrooms are starting to come up beside the Round Pond.
I had to look up what the Spanish name for Fairy Ring mushrooms is. I found that a rare local name for them is "seta de corro", which is an excellent translation for Fairy Ring mushroom. This astounds me, as I wasn't aware that belief in fairy rings existed in Spain except in the uppermost northwest. Now I must dig!
ReplyDeleteTinúviel
The rings are striking things, often very visible on the ground as the spreading ring of mycelium causes the grass to overgrow and die. Hardly surprising that there are so many superstitions about them and the danger of stepping into one in case you get abducted -- the flying saucers of folklore.
DeleteWe can never know how much (or how little) of our folklore is based on fact, alas. Certainly, tales of abductions and child-swapping go back a very long way: looking at various modes of human behaviour in the modern age, the idea of a healthy baby being taken and something not-quite human put in its place has a lot to be said for it. :l
DeleteI suppose, though, that the idea of a changeling is a way of a mother avoiding blame when a mentally impaired baby is born.
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