Great Crested Grebe in Battersea Park

It was a lovely sunny day yesterday so my camera took me for a walk in Battersea Park, which is not far from where I live.

There I was lucky enough to see one of my favourite waterbirds - a Great Crested Grebe.  It was bobbing about all over the place, often disappearing from sight under the water and diving for food.  Below it is pictured with a Black-headed Gull.

In the photograph below, it is joined by a Tufted drake.

Now it is in the middle of a group of five Black-headed Gulls.

As usual, it was not very keen on swimming near to the edge of the lake, so it was quite difficult to get any decent close-up photographs.  Here the Great Crested Grebe is in front of a line of Black-headed Gulls.

Every so often the Grebe did swim near to the path on which I was standing.  The photographs below were taken when the Great Crested Grebe was nearest to me.

I love going to any of London's parks as I never know what beautiful birds I am going to see and they are always different.  I was so lucky to see this Great Crested Grebe swimming in the lake yesterday.

Progress of the Barnes pond cygnets - July/November

I like visiting the Barnes Wetland Centre, but do not manage to go there as often as I would like.  On my way there in early July I stopped off at Barnes village pond and took some photographs of the swan family there.  There were four fluffy grey cygnets and one white fluffy cygnet, together with their parents.  There are more photographs of the swan family in one of my previous posts.

The photograph of two contrasting cygnets was taken on my way to the Wetlands at about lunch time.

The photograph of two contrasting cygnets eating grass near the pond was taken on my way back to Barnes Bridge station in the late afternoon.  I love their little fluffy wings.

It was a sunny day yesterday so I decided to go over to Barnes again, but I did not manage to leave the flat until mid-day and, therefore, arrived in Barnes later than I had planned.  The swan family were swimming over to the side of the village pond and I managed to take some photographs of them.  It was about four months since my last visit to the pond in Barnes and there were only three cygnets altogether, instead of five.

A parent mute swan got out of the water and flapped its wings and seems to have a large leaf stuck to its tummy.  I do not know enough about swans to know if this is the male or the female.  It looks very large in this photo, so I am guessing that it might be dad.  There are two brown/white patchy cygnets and one pure white one, so I was pleased to see that the pure white cygnet had survived.

This is a photograph of one of the "normal" coloured cygnets.

In this photograph there is a cygnet with the normal brown and white markings and the pure white cygnet.

This is the other brown and white cygnet.

The white cygnet looks just like its parents, except that the beak is a lighter colour.

The swan family swam over to the other side of the pond, where a young family was feeding the other ducks, black-headed gulls and pigeons.  The swans were very keen to join in.

It was pandemonium!  The black-headed gulls were flying everywhere, but the swans and cygnets were being very patient.  In this photograph, the white cygnet is next to a parent - so the contrast in the colour of the beaks can be clearly seen - and, of course, it is still much smaller than a fully-grown swan.  The cygnets are now nearly there though!