In the early part of June, during one of my favourite walks in London's St. James's Park, I was thrilled to see a male Hooded Merganser. At first he was preening his feathers.
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| Preening Hooded Merganser |
Then he sat up and was looking intently at me as I was wobbling in a crouching position while trying to take photos of him. I am no longer very athletic, nor ever was actually, and crouching is a dangerous thing for me to do. I have read that photographers are supposed to get down low, even lying on the ground, in order to take good photos of birds - but I will never be able to do the lying-down thing! Crouching is all I can manage and it is hard work standing back up again.
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| Hooded Merganser behind the greenery |
Anyway, I was very pleased to see this rather unusual waterbird in the park. I don't know if he was a wild bird or had escaped from a wildfowl collection as that is where I have seen Hooded Mergansers before - in the captive collections in Regents Park and the Barnes Wetland Centre.
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| Close-up of male Hooded Merganser |
He has an amazingly weird shaped crested head, lovely black-and-white wing feathers and piercing yellow eyes. What a magnificent looking bird!
There's another one in the park today. Lovely bird.
ReplyDeleteI've seen a male and female Hooded Merganser in St. James's Park a few times since this visit. I think that they must have a wildfowl collection there, as they do in Regent's Park, as there seem to be quite a few unusual birds on the lake as well all the common ones such as Mallards and Coots. It's great to see them at reasonably close quarters anyway.
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