Category: David

Most herons are now congregating at one or other of the local heronries. Not this bird, which was by the island on the upper pool at Perton recently. Probably it’s not yet mature.

Rosebay willowherb seeds normally float through the summer air on their feathery seeds, sometimes called sugar stealers. These plants held on to just a few of theirs from last year.

For St Valentine’s Day, a short video of a pair of swans engaging in the coordinated aquatic dance which is their courtship ritual It’s possible the dance ended with the pair mating, though I didn’t wait around to see.

The swans were on the Avon at Stratford back in spring 2019, and were filmed on a mobile.

The goosanders which turned up on the upper pool at Perton before Christmas seem set to stay for a while. Its’s harder to estimate how many now that they are scattered around the water, but numbers are possibly in the teens.

Last time I visited, there was one lone female on the lower pool. She’s the one in these pictures.

Vivernum (guelder rose) berries are bright red and glossy, but seem to be ignored as a food source by birds all through the winter.

The main flock of shovellers were not far from the biggest group of tufites. Numbers had again roughly doubled since my previous visit to West Park. There were about twenty swimming together as well as the few stand-offish ones. Much of the time, the shovellers were engaging in the activity which gives them their name: swimming in tight circles with their beaks just below the surface of the water, straining it for the small particles of whatever it is they eat.