Closer to home

I had a meeting in town late afternoon, and with a bit of time spare I left early and had a swing through Hyde Park. In theory I was after the little owls who live there but it was really busy so they weren't showing. I did walk along the Long Water though where you can get close views of a  number of different water birds. I had my camera with me and got some interesting views, nothing rare but nice to see them close up.
Firstly, there is a good colony of cormorants nesting on the islands on the lake, and one of them was having a rest near the restaurant at the end of the lake. You don't normally see how beautifully green their eyes are!

There were lots of ducks and geese loitering around. I was amazed at the numbers of Egyptian geese there, probably numbering over 20 I guess. Amazing seeing as they are all from escapees and only a few years ago were still quite uncommon.

 Of the native ducks, tufties were being quite confiding and in the windy weather the males had some extreme hair-dos!

Of course. gulls were the most numerous, especially because los of tourists were chucking bread at them. I do like common gulls although they are not the commonest of our native gulls. They can be identified by the yellow bill with a band at the end and what I think is a very soft-looking face.

There are a lot of larger gulls as well, mainly herring gulls but a few lesser black-backs as well. Interestingly most were juveniles, either 1st or 2nd winter birds, so without the clear grey backs and white bellies. 

One of the adults who was picking on tourists for bread was a very smart lesser black-backed gull. They do have yellow legs, which can cause confusion with the much rarer yellow-legged gull, but there were none of those around.

The most numerous were the black-heaed gulls and this one was having a good old bathe to keep its feathers in good shape.

Finally, the persons were starting to nest on the island, which may need a visit later on when the young are around.

For a walk through town it was very interesting. You forget sometimes both how good the wildlife can be in urban environments and also how close you can get to them.