Friday 28 July 2017

More cygnets and other water birds - mid-May in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens

This is a continuation from my previous post in order to show more photographs of wildlife that were taken during my walk round the lake in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens on 21st May.

I was lucky enough to see some beautiful Red-crested Pochards.


There were three small Eygptian goslings feeding at the edge of the water.

A parent Egyptian goose was nearby and was keeping a beady eye on the babies.

A mute swan in a bad mood scurried across the surface of the lake.

A mother mute swan was hiding with her small cygnets in a place that was almost impossible to photograph.  I had to squeeze behind a bench and try to get the camera above or between a spiky metal fence.  I guess that there was a lot of suitable food for the cygnets under the shrubbery by the bank.



After I had given up with the struggle to photograph the five cygnets that were hidden under the tree, mum swan decided to come out from her hidden position.  Trust one of the cygnets not to be paying attention to the direction that the rest of the family was taking!

Not far away, near the Peter Pan statue, a couple of Gadwalls were relaxing in the water.

Nearby, on one of the posts, a Mandarin drake was practising his yoga positions.

What a handsome model he makes!

On the other side of the lake there was a Coot chick in the most disgusting nest I have seen.  Why do people throw all their plastic rubbish into the water?  It is an absolute disgrace.

A little further along the Serpentine I came across a stand-off between a coot and a magpie.  The preening mute swan was paying no attention to the squabbling birds.

Further along there was another swan family.  Here is mum with four cute little fluffy cygnets.

I like the way that the cygnets were clustered round the back end of mum while they were swimming. 

This is cute over-load - three sweet little fluffy cygnets in a row.

After I had been standing by the mother swan and cygnets for a little while, mum suddenly took off and went thundering along the Serpentine leaving a coot in charge of her cygnets!

A short while later she came back to them.  Then dad turned up.  I think she had gone to tell him that he needed to help out with the child care!

Back on the other side of the Serpentine, I took a few more photos of the Canada goose with the interesting white leucistic face.


On my way out of the park I saw some lovely white arum lilies in the Dell.


There were more foxgloves in the formal beds near the rose garden.  These were filled with tall white foxgloves and shorter mauve flowers.

This bush was covered with pretty pink roses.

There were some lovely tall round white aliums.

The flower heads obviously attract bees.  I think this may be a small bee rather than a wasp.

This alium is covered with several large bees as well as a smaller one.

Once again I had a great walk in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, during which I took hundreds of photographs.

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