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| Raven - Tower of London |
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| Red Crested Pochard - Richmond Park |
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| Egyptian Goose - Richmond Park |
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| Egyptian Goose family - Richmond Park |
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| Green Woodpecker - Richmond Park |
Last week we had a family break in London, and very clever as we are, we decided to go during the half term holidays as to avoid the crowds generated from the Olympics, a couple of weeks after booking we realised that are dates in the
capital city matched the jubilee celebrations! Never mind, we had a great time anyway, and I think I may have invented a new Olympic sport of dodging union jacks waved by neurotic royalist morons descended onto the capital from the far flung depths of the commonwealth! Rant over, I did manage to do a bit of birding and the pick of the bunch has to be a Black Redstart I could hear singing around the Tower of London.....but never managed to see the dam thing!
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| Pheasants Eye - Wanstead Flats |
Other highlights included a couple of Peregrines over the city, and a walk around the Wanstead Flats (East London) came up trumps with a singing Nightingale (again I never saw the bird!), 3 pairs of Great Crested Grebe, 2 Egyptian Geese, Kestrel, 5 Cormorants, Pheasants Eye, and a Roe Deer. We visited Richmond Park which is a fantastic site; an ancient hunting estate set in a huge area of open land festooned with750 year old Oaks, their was something a bit surreal about watching herds of Red and Fallow Deer with the city skyline in the background, apart from the Deers I managed to connect with all three Woodpecker species, with Green Woodpecker especially common in the park, also an unusual Moth species with very long antenna. by far the most common species had to be the Ring Necked Parakeets with at least 350 seen during the day.....maybe Sefton Park in a few years time! The Parakeets certainly must take up nesting sites, yet native hole dwellers such as Starlings, Stock Doves and
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| Mute Swan family - Richmond Park |
Woodpeckers are much in evidence in the park too. On the lakes in the park we found breeding Egyptian Geese, Mute Swans, Pochard, Tufted Duck, and a lone male Red Crested Pochard..... an absolute stonker it has to be said, but the jury's out on the birds wild credentials! A great visit to London for the family and a bit of birding thrown in ..... perfect.
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| Red Deer - Richmond Park |
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| Red Deer - Richmond Park |
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| Red Deer - Richmond Park |
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| Red Deer - Richmond Park |
2 comments:
Nice pics Danny. Pity I missed you - well not entirely as I was having an amazing time in south Wales while you were down here. Some good sightings (and soundings) you had too. Lesser-spotted Woodpecker is a great sighting anywhere now. I heard a Nature programme on Radio 4 a few weeks ago about LSWs and they said that they have become so hard to find now that the BTO is no longer doing any species-specific monitoring for them - they're just using all the records they can get. So if you're on BirdTrack you should probably submit those records (that being said they probably know about the ones in Richmond Park, but I would still submit them). Btw, I think your moth in the photo is actually a caddis but I don't know which one.
Thanks for that mate, did you see anything good in South Wales? Next time im in the Capital we will have to catch up. I will submit the LSW record, I had a bird in Greenbank this spring....for the last three springs running i have had them there.... I just cant pin them down!
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