A nearly white Greylag Goose has arrived on the Serpentine. It's a bird we've seen in recent years, one of the geese that come to the park to moult in June on the safety of a large lake. This year it has come unusually early.
Safety is relative, of course, and the Serpentine is a very dangerous place for goslings small enough to be snatched by Herring Gulls and Carrion Crows. But the single Greylag gosling has survived another day ...
... and so have the remaining three little Egyptians.
The Mute cygnets on the Long Water were well guarded as they went with their parents to the gravel strip.
The swans 4FYY and 4FUE were still sitting pointlessly behind the fence at the edge of the lake. It looks as if, having stolen the nest site from the other pair 4GIA and 4DTI, they aren't going to use it.
A party of Mallard drakes relaxed on the path. There wasn't a female in sight, which would have caused them to start chasing her and fighting each other.
A Great Crested Grebe had difficulty swallowing a large ruffe it has caught, but managed in the end.
Moorhens don't have webbed feet, and swim with a curious circular action as if they were riding an invisible bicycle. It works quite well.
Yet another Coot nest has appeared in a silly place on the open edge of the Serpentine.
A Starling chick looked out of the nest hole in the plane tree by the boathouses.
One of the Robins at Mount Gate came out to collect pine nuts for the chicks ...
... and a Great Tit ate its handout on a branch.
The Little Owl at the Round Pond looked down from her lime tree.
It was a good day for insects, with the first Common Blue damselfly I've seen this year.
There were also some Blue-Tailed damselflies at the back of the Lido, but they wouldn't stop to be photographed.
A Common Blue butterfly was there too, resting on a blade of grass.
A hastily snatched shot of a Red-Tailed Bumblebee in the Rose Garden. It flew off before I could get a better one.
Offerings under the Peter Pan statue, probably to Liam Payne rather than the fictional Peter, and about to be snatched by a passing whippet. I shall never understand humans.
Birds are certainly easier to understand, sometimes. Grief moves in strange ways.
ReplyDeleteI love the picture of the young Starling. it looks as if it's saying, "Hello there, big wide world!".
Instead of the doggie paddle, I move that we call it the Moorhen paddle, at least in this blog.
Tinúviel
Young Starlings are fascinating when they get out of the nest. Even their brisk parents are fazed by their lightning-speed pestering.
DeleteYes, that is exactly the image I had in mind when watching that Moorhen. It's a wonderfully inefficient means of locomotion, but the size of their feet gives them impetus.
By coincidence I found my first (3 of them) Common Blue Damselflies on a local fishing pond. Also my first Red-eyed Damselflies in addition to Large Red, Blue-tailed & Azure but no proper dragons.
ReplyDeleteA good haul for one day. Large Reds are rare here but occasionally seen in a remote corner of the allotment where no one goes.
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