I was greeted with a hard frost when I arrived at Bushy Park this morning. Regent’s Park (where I live) was hovering around zero mark. I had a few meeting to attend today so didn’t really do much birding apart from 1/2 an hour by Heron Pond. There was nothing out of the ordinary there but I did see 35 Redwings fly north.
Dawn from my office.
Heron Pond from the western end looks bad, but move to its eastern end and it is a different story.
This stupid cygnet could have swam around this ice but chose to be an ice breaker.
I thought it was a bad idea and much to cold to go paddling, this Heron proved me wrong.
He very skilfully managed to separate the fish from the leaves.
This Coot really didn’t like Moorhens coming to close to him.
Tufted/Red crested Pochard Hybrid
Tufted Duck for comparison
Not that I like Canadas but I thought the photo was reasonable.
I had to pop into Kingston, my reward for putting up with queues of traffic was a superb female Peregrine eating a pigeon on the Town Hall, later on it had moved to the weather vein.
I am sorry for the poor quality, I digi-binned them.
Comments
Misty with hoar frost on the ground at dawn.
41 Shoveler, 4 Teal, 11 Mute Swan (including a flock of five adults that stopped off briefly around 11am), 10 Common Gull (all four of the above totals are season-highs for me), 2 Little Grebe, 1 Great Crested Grebe (both season-lows), 3 Gadwall, 1 Stock Dove (the first I've seen this autumn, flying down the northeast arm of the lake and landing in a tree on Heron Island, area 8 at 08:35), 1♀ Sparrowhawk (Winfield House garden, area 4).
The variety of bright berries (e.g. rowan and crabapple), and the birds that eat them (apart from blackbirds), are significantly reduced from a week ago.