A Green Woodpecker laughed sardonically in a tree near the Lido, so I went to have a look, expecting to find that this normally very shy bird would quickly fly away.
It did fly off the tree trunk -- but not away. Instead it landed almost at my feet and started poking unconcernedly in the grass. I've noticed before that, quite illogically, they feel safer on the ground, protected by their colour, than they do when out of reach up a tree. Sometimes I have almost stepped on one by mistake.
There had been a frost in the night, and a Wood Pigeon was having a hard time digging in the frozen soil of a flower bed in the Rose Garden.
Carrion Crows in the Dell were also having difficulty in their search for worms.
A crow had displaced the usual Black-Headed Gull from the top of the Big Bird statue, and was cawing in a self-satisfied manner.
Several Jays followed me along the edge of the Long Water.
A flock of Long-Tailed Tits moved through the trees.
Both of the pair of Blue Tits in the Rose Garden are now coming for pine nuts. This one perched on an odd-looking small bush which PlantNet says is a Leatherleaf Viburnum, V. rhyditophyllum.
The Robin that lives in the yew hedge in the Flower Walk came out on the railings.
Not seen for weeks, there was a Peregrine on the barracks tower. I took a precautionary picture from across the lake, hindered by a slight mist, in case it flew away before I could get round to the other side. It did.
A Moorhen went through the Coot nest at Peter Pan in the absence of its owner, looking for insects.
Another perched on the willow by the bridge. A pair nests here every year in a place that can't be seen either from the ground or from the bridge.
The Canada x Greylag hybrid goose on the left is the mate of the pure Canada behind it. They were with another of the hybrids, of which there are three, very similar looking and almost certainly siblings.
The Egyptians at the Henry Moore sculpture are definitely not nesting yet. They were strutting about the lawn together.
I think there's only one Shoveller left on the lake. Yesterday I saw it under a tree on the Long Water. Today it was under the Dell restaurant balcony going through the windblown debris at the edge of the lake.
Here it is at work, seen looking down from the balcony.
Shovellers have such a fine iridiscent plumage in the sunlight.
ReplyDeleteIt must have been very cold, for frost to cling on even when the sun is high. The poor birds must have been starving and waiting for pine nuts like manna from on high.
Tinúviel
The sun doesn't get high. London is at 51° north, the same latitude as Labrador on the other side of the Atlantic, and it's only because of the Gulf Stream that we have a temperate if soggy climate. Around the winter solstice the sun slowly and reluctantly hauls itself up to 27½° above the horizon and then sags feebly down, setting round 3.50 pm. It takes many days before this improves even slightly and the,n as my gloomy grandmother never tired of saying, As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens.
DeleteI have a friend with a chronic limp who was able to photograph a Green Woodpecker in a tree from quite close up as it clocked her disability, she believes. But they are one of the last birds I would have expected to 'do a Robin' around anybody. "Ha ha ha ha ha, you think you can anticipate me?" Phenomenal footage. Jim
ReplyDeleteOne thing I have learnt over the years is that the behaviour of birds is utterly unpredictable. But I was astonished to see this creature poking around barely eight feet feet away. Even when it turned and I walked round for a better angle (this bit of film is not shown, as I have several minutes of video) it didn't react in the slightest, and when I left it was still digging.
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