I found this lovely duck on the Thames, near Battersea Park. Does anyone know what kind of duck it is? A male in non-breeding plumage? I am pretty ignorant when it comes to ducks.
Birds in London: Mystery Duck
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Category Archives: London
Birds in London: Greylag Geese
Snacks?
An unsuspecting young boy is about to make some new friends.
Birds in London: Starling Pool Party
Why stand around in the Kensington Gardens, cold and complaining, being partially wet? It’s more fun to get really wet! Get your friends wet too!
Birds in London: Little Coots
Coot children look like something invented by Hieronymus Bosch. This is an advanced little coot, who can slurp up slime all by itself.
And this little coot still has his slime fed to him by his parents. He waits eagerly, a fuzzball of color in the dreary pond.
These coots are all residents of the Wandsworth Common.
Birds in London: Moorhen Family
Moorhen children look like balding aliens! But cute balding aliens. Their parents take turns bringing them slime carefully collected from the bottom of the pond, and they enjoy their slime very much.
Birds in London: Parenting
Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to take a very nice, if very wet, trip to London. Because of the terrible weather I wasn’t able to do too much birding, but I did manage to spend a morning watching parenting of all kinds in the Wandsworth Common. I only photographed the avian parents, but all the while a number of humans were engaged in pretty similar activities behind me.
This mallard mother was mad at the coot for getting too close to her ducklings. The coot was trying to get the best pond slime for its own children, and wasn’t too happy to be pushed around by the mallard. They made a big fuss about the whole thing.
This is what an angry coot looks like. I don’t think the mallard was too impressed.
Birds in London: Juvenile Mallard
The back of a juvenile mallard in Wandsworth Common.
Birds in London: Claws on wings!
A month or so ago my husband came to me in a state of excitement wanting to know more about the claws that woodpeckers have on their wings. I had to confess that I knew nothing about claws on woodpecker wings. He claimed that he had just read in our great bathroom book that woodpeckers have claws on their wings, and he had a great vision of these woodpeckers using the claws to climb around on trees, something like ice-climbers use their picks I suppose.
So, we looked this up, and found no references on the internet to woodpeckers with claws on their wings. A closer inspection of the great bathroom book found a somewhat poorly written sentence that could lead one to interpret that woodpeckers have this fantastic property, but the author was just talking about some aspect of the bird’s claws. We were both a bit disappointed. Continue reading
Birds in London: About town
According to my favorite German birding guide, Great Britain is the “motherland of birding.” In fact, the authors advise that if you really want to know about the birds in any particular region of the world (including Germany), you had better hope that a Brit has already been there, because if so, he certainly has written a book about it.
So I wasn’t at all surprised to overhear no less than three conversations about birding in my jaunts around town (including one overheard from a bathroom stall in the National Gallery), nor to find that I had competition when attempting to browse the incredible birding section at Foyles. I also noticed that no one raised an eyebrow when I was standing in the street looking at trees through my binoculars. Here in Berlin I always get suspicious stares when I’m out observing.
Birds in London: St. James Park
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to spend some time in London. I had meant to be a good tourist and see the famous changing of the guards in front of the palace, but I got distracted by the incredible numbers of royal waterfowl in St. James Park. Anyway, I was happier to watch these avian guards parade around than those funny human ones. The great white pelicans shown above were strutting down the path, keeping an eye on everything and everyone just like old police officers. Continue reading