A Burning Bush, Euonymus alatus, on the outside edge of the Flower Walk made a spectacular background for a Blue Tit ...
... and a Great Tit.
The familiar Great Tit in the Rose Garden followed me around and collected several pine nuts.
It was a dark drizzly day with a blustery wind and the Little Owl at the Round Pond had retreated to her hole.
Pigeon Eater had already eaten most of his latest victim, but felt that he could just manage a little more and came back for a second helping.
One of the three youngest Grey Herons fished on the small waterfall in the Dell, hoping to get a small fish as it was washed over the edge. It did seem to get something at 15 seconds, but mostly there was nothing but dead leaves.
One of the others had returned to the nest. They tend to do this when it's raining, perhaps because it comforts them in the unexpectedly miserable conditions of their first autumn.
Cormorants clustered on the posts by the bridge.
A Moorhen paddled through floating leaves.
A pair of Mute Swans east of the Lido preened while a slightly older heron fished on the edge of the reed bed.
The wind encouraged flying, and Greylag Geese circled the lake ...
... and splashed down among some Coots, which didn't seem bothered.
Some more fungi from Mario's very educative tour yesterday. This is Laughing Jim, so called because it's hallucinogenic. Its more ordinary name is Spectacular Rustgill, Gymnopilus junonius.
The little buttons at the left edge of the picture are Sulphur Tuft, Hypholoma fasciculare, and here are some more on the other side of the trunk.
Oyster mushrooms, Pleurotus ostreatus, have a tendency to disappear promptly because they're edible and good, and expensive to buy.
Two more I photographed today: Stubble Rosegill, Volvariella gloiocephala, in the Rose Garden but also quite common in other parts of the park.
Judas Ear, Auricularia auricula-Judae, is a gelatinous fungus, edible but tasteless. It's so named because it often grows on elder trees and there is a legend that Judas hanged himself on an elder. Several of this genus are popular foods in China where their peculiar texture is appreciated.
A crowd of several hundred people gathered at Peter Pan for a kind of wake for the singer Liam Payne, who fell out of a window a few days ago. The statue was plastered with photographs, flowers and balloons. I don't know why they chose this place, perhaps something to do with a boy who never grew up.
A Blue Tit can look spectacular with any background!
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure what the connection of Peter Pan has to do with it.. perhaps he thought he could fly too. But Peter Pan was never intoxicated.
Unfortunately, this other boy will never grow up either. I still don't understand this phenomenon of grieving for famous figures as if they were your own kin. While the Coots swim past on, sublimely unconcerned.
ReplyDeleteThe Blue Tit looks spectacular!
Sweet summer child, that Heron.
Tinúviel
Payne was 31, no boy, indeed he was well past the usual pop star's death at 27.
ReplyDeleteMost people thought that the public was fairly rational until Diana met her ignominious end in the Paris tunnel, too stupid and arrogant to fasten her seatbelt during a high-speed chase. Within days an area the size of a football field at the south edge of Kensington Gardens was covered with rotting cut flowers and rain-soaked teddy bears. It was an eye-opener in the worst possible way.