Regent’s Park (blue print)
Smew: the drake red head is still present.
Common Shelduck: the pair that have bred or or attempted to breed have returned again.
Common Teal: 6 on area 8.
Northern Shoveler: 38 present
Grey Heron: at least 2 nests have young in.
Red Kite: one flew north at 10.10 am, just as I was going in for coffee, unfortunately the camera was in the car but the bird was very high and wouldn’t have been a good picture.
Great Black-backed Gull: four flew NW, but were they GBB’s, they looked large and heavy winged, but the distant photo shows something different about them.
Lesser Redpoll: one flew in from the SW.
Siskin: one flew north.
Grey Heron in the rail ditch looking for breakfast
Grey Heron eating breakfast
The female on the eye level nest is now incubating
Other pairs are still mating
At least 2 nests have young in them, and the picture below shows 2 nests, one slightly in front of the other, though it looks like one large nest.
Common Shelduck
Shoveler
Perching Little Grebe
The photo possibly shows LBB’s I thought that they flew like GBB’s though it could have been that they were flying into a head-wind and I wasn’t wearing my glasses.
Reed Bunting female in the rail ditch, before flying towards Hanover Bridge and then on to the bird feeder tree.
Comments
[Myself having birded mostly in Canada, the Reed Bunting was a lifer for me and had me frantically leafing through my bird guide to identify yet another European 'little brown job' (this one with a white malar stripe on a dusky background as its only obvious field mark). Luckily, viewing conditions were perfect, the bird showed amazingly well from all angles (singing "tsee, tsee, tsee, titic, tsee, tsee") and of course Tony had seen a female only yesterday so immature male Reed Buntings were on my radar. Despite all these clues, I was stumped and beginning to panic until the bird dived obligingly into... a REED bed - even I'm not THAT thick! For the record, the bird I saw has yet to start moulting appreciably into the extensive brownish-black bib on the upper chest, as shown in my Collins field guide.]
(Today's Reed Bunting was amazing - it was if he was complaining, "How many clues to my identity do you NEEED, mate?". The species is also much smaller than I had imagined - the field guide makes it look like an Amazon.)
(Of course, on banner migration days when my luck is in I'll 'ramble' to other areas too!)