This Black-Headed Gull with Danish rings, metal 6J-1833 and white plastic V17U, was seen by the Serpentine on 30 October 2024.
I have just heard from Augustin Le Roux, who photographed the same gull in Paris on 15 November 2022 ...
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... and 20 January 2024. So it's a well travelled bird with a taste for city life.
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The small Common Gull at the Lido perched beside a Black-Headed Gull. As you can see, it's only very slightly larger.
Pigeon Eater was on his usual spot at the Dell restaurant waiting for a Feral Pigeon to step down into the floating leaves, start preening, and close an eye on his side. The seasoned pigeons would never do such a thing near him but he, the Peregrines and the Sparrowhawks take hundreds of pigeons every year and naive birds flock in from outside to take their place.
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The Robin at the southwest corner of the bridge looked up warily at a Magpie on a treetop, but came over for a pine nut.
Ahmet Amerikali found a Goldcrest in the same place. They nest in a yew tree here every year.
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A Robin singing in the Rose Garden stopped when it saw me and came out to be fed.
A Coal Tit was in a different rose bush ...
... and there was a Blue Tit in the small hawthorn clump in the middle.
The female Chaffinch in the Flower Walk emerged from under a bush. I haven't seen her mate for some time and fear that he is gone.
Tufted Ducks, with the drakes now in their black and white breeding plumage, dived in the Serpentine.
There were two Shoveller drakes on the Round Pond. We seem to have fewer of these every year, for which I think the main reason is the establishment of wetland sancutaries along the Thames which they prefer.
However, the number of Common Pochards, which are in serious decline nationally, is going up and up in the park for no discernible reason. Here is a drake on the right of two of the larger Red-Crested Pochards, which are not closely related but they share a name because of their red heads. Pochard is a French term for a drunkard.
The young Egyptian Goose is usually seen sitting down on the shore by the boathouses. It can now walk quite well but it seems that its injured leg is still painful and it prefers to keep the weight off it.
Two peaceful places in the busy park.
The lawn around the Diana memorial fountain is enclosed by railiings and dogs are not allowed inside. This has made it a favourite spot for geese, especially Greylags, to graze in peace, especially in colder weather when there are no children running around in the fountain.
The Dell is an area at the foot of the earth dam that holds in the water of the Serpentine, and therefore has a steep slope on one side. It became notorious as London's favourite spot for duelling during the 18th and early 19th centuries, and I have read that 68 people were killed there.
It was landscaped in the 1880s and set out with subtropical plants. In 1922 it was fenced off with railings to act as a wildlife reserve. The waterfall at the lake outflow would be a puny affair if it just consisted of water draining from the lake, so it is boosted bt a large electric pump. Here are autumn views from the bottom and top of the slope, and two side views of the big lawn in the middle.
Everyone loves a city break. At least he doesn't have to endure the tourist tax, ay! God, I hate the human species sometimes
ReplyDeleteSean
It's such a paradox. Such a gorgeous bit of land, the Dell is, so picturesque and peaceful-looking, and yet it was the scenery for so much death.
ReplyDeleteAre the female chaffinch's feet affected by the virus? I thought it only affected male's feet.
We have a cross-continental, cosmopolitan gull in our midst. I 'm sure there must be even wider-traveller gulls, although I doubt any bird will ever be in the position to beat the record of the Coot that flew all the way to Saint Petersburg and back. It just boggles the mind.
Tinúviel
I asked Andrea the Dell gardener (incidentally that's not her in the film) whether she had ever seen any ghosts there. She said no.
DeleteYes, the female Chaffinch has the virus, but not badly yet. Male Chaffinches seem to be more severely infected, perhaps because they move around more. But it's very infectious and has also been seen on Blackbirds and Jays, though not often, thank goodness.
We do occasionally get Black-Headed Gulls from Finland and Russia. It's almost always Black-Headed Gulls, not so much because of their habits but because they're relatively easy to catch by hand and ring. I imagine that the other species are just as peripatetic.
Ghosts are an intriguing phenomenon, if it's true. If ghosts were to be true then how would you explain something like that, with the physics of science. My understanding of it would be that the spirit somehow continues to live on through the energy of the universe, in another form of consciousness and in a different dimension. They would lapse over into our dimension, hence why we can see them. There has been too many reports throughout the human history to maybe be coincidental of ghost contact, or every living soul ever existed is just all in on one big joke together...
DeleteSean
'Ghosts' would not necessarily involve any separation of consciousness from the workings of the brain. It may be that there are degrees of quantum entanglement we cannot yet fathom, yet account for some 'psychic' phenomena such as crisis apparitions. With the advent of Google adverts has come what appears to be 'psychic AI' where people are served Google ads relevant to something that they were thinking about or had recently happen to them, though they had never or not recently done anything online relating to it. I have experienced such coincidences more times than I can remember. Jim
DeleteI am inclined to take the 'Stone Tape' theory seriously -- that horrifying events leave some kind of imprint on the place where they occurred. The idea of 'accursed ground' is an ancient one. But also, no doubt, if there are such imprints the sensitivity of different people to discern them varies greatly.
DeleteI have often had reports from people of a Google search causing a deluge of targeted advertisements. That can be explained most simply by the fact that everything you do is spied on. But I have a feeling that reports that what people were merely thinking has influenced advertisements are simply the result of people forgetting what they have done. Neither has never happened to me personally as I don't use Google as my search engine. I use Presearch, which is supposed to anoymise its searches. I also use a VPN when doing anything that might be considered likely to attract attention.
Incidentally, I have been doing a blog about birds for almost 14 years, but as far as I know I have never had targeted advertising about related products such as binoculars or birdseed. I say 'as far as I know' because for all that time I have been using the best ad blockers available. Life would be intolerable without them.
Jim, that psychicAI sounds like a 'Black Mirror' episode. Google definitely spy's on its users with the help of AI through search engines as a marketing concept, but possible telepathy of the human mind without any interface between... this is what Neuralink will be used for. As amazing as it is the technology evolving, I fear for the worst. God help us all.
DeleteSean
Ralph, that is an interesting idea and has some sense behind it. I've never come across the stone tape theory before and it has me engaged. Perhaps horrific events in reality can somehow entrap a hologram of the spirit through raw emotional state of trauma. It's all energy and frequencies at the end of the day.
DeleteSean
I must be the last person remaining who doesn't get targeted ads. Maybe the reason is not using any google product? Family members will discuss, say, a trip to a given city, and sure enough ads about that city will appear everywhere. But not in my case.
DeleteThe older I get, the more sense I see in the Stope Tape theory. Kind of like a giant vinyl record: if you put it on a player, music will come out. But a player is needed.
Tinúviel
I'd be interested to walk past the Dell with a medium. Of course if I took him or her to Tyburn just up a hill, the medium would know that thousands have died there and make the appropriate exclamations, but few know about the history of the Dell.
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