More young Mapgies have come out, this time from the pair nesting in the Triangle shrubbery.
The Jays, absent for some time while breeding, are reappearing but I haven't seen a young one yet.
Young Great Tits couldn't be more noticeable. Two were yelling for attention on either side of the Flower Walk.
On the path below, rival Feral Pigeons went for each other. Doves of peace? Forget it.
Two young Long-Tailed Tits were quietly hunting for insects by themselves on a winged elm by the Long Water. They've become independent very quickly.
A Song Thrush was on the path picking up fallen fruit from a Bird Cherry tree. This is a distant picture because some people blunderd past and frightened it away before I could get any closer.
On a nearby hawthorn there was a Yellow Shell moth, Camptogramma bilineata. The name was conferred on them by Linnaeus in one of his vaguer moments, as they never have fewer than three wavy white lines.
A Robin was looking at it from the nest tree, but seemed inclined to leave it alone.
Pigeon Eater, in his usual place on the Dell restaurant roof, pretended not to be watching two pigeons coming dangerously close.
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But we know what was going through his head.
In addition to the existing Coot family with eight young, two more broods have now appeared in different pools in the Italian Garden. There is no sound from the fountains, as they have broken down yet again.
The Coots nesting on the post at Peter Pan are unstoppably building up their nest again for a third breeding attempt this year. They just do not learn from experience.
A nest on the gravel strip on the Round Pond: not much chance of success here either.
The Mallard family passed by in close formation ...
... and as usual the Mandarin ducklings were straying away from their mother.
The Mute Swan on the nest at the Diana fountain landing stage, 4GIQ, stood up to reveal at least four eggs. But she has been sitting here for over six weeks and nothing has happened yet.
The Wool Carder Bees in the Rose Garden are always on the Lamb's Ears plants, since these provide not only nectar from the flowers but also fibres from the hairy leaves which the bees gather to line their nests.
Quite how there has been such a Coot population boom is sometimes hard to explain.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if those Mandarin ducklings are somehow abnormal. They stray so much, but I don't know if Mandarins being descended from tame or collection birds are less wary than other ducks.
I hope those two pigeons can read. It'd stand them in much better stead than knowing how to count to five (which they can!):
Tinúviel
There are Coot nests all round the Long Water, many of them hidden by bushes, and more on the Serpentine island. Losses of young are considerable, but sheer mass effort has its effect. The population has never stopped growing over what is now a century since they were unwisely introduced to the central London parks.
DeleteOne of the problems for Mandains is that they have almost no voice and can only produce the ghost of a quack, so they can't call their ducklings. But you really would have thought that the ducklings would be more securely imprinted on their mother.
Today a family of Firecrests was sighted on Hampstead Heath and a juvenile in Battersea Park. Not bad given their first UK breeding record of 1962, and not unlike the northward expansion of Cetti's Warbler (first UK breeding 1972), in spite of the wide-ranging effects of insecticides. I rather fear there will be no stopping the Aedes mosquitoes.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that about the bee's nesting material, more ingenious than mud. Jim
Ahmet has been following the Battersea Park Firecrests. There are certainly two breeding pairs.
DeleteWhat banished the mosquitoes from London was the draining of the Thamesside swamps in Southwark, Battersea and Pimlico. The 'ague' that people suffered from in Shakespeare's time was simply malaria. Perhaps declining standards of maintenance are allowing them to return.