Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Eventually I have Blackcap on the year list. I thought I was going to have to write a meandering threnody to a lost passerine as they seem to have arrived everywhere else, but no - yesterday brought a Blackcap singing in the trees in the Hurlingham Club which with the Swifts last week brings me to a nice round 60 for the year. What dominated my time in the patch yesterday was a Sparrowhawk that was also in the trees in the Hurlingham Club. With a slight nod to Dave Lewis, here is a picture of said bird.
Not only did these trees produce a year tick and a good bird (I got better views than the photo would have you believe don't you know) but I heard the damned peacock again, and then a bit of plastic wandered up the bank...
A Goose doing confused parentage.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Friday lunchtime I went for a wander over to see what the toffs were up to. And it wasn't much. The grandstands were empty, and there seemed to be more security than pimms quaffing punters. I noted that there was a Ring-necked Parakeet nearby, and then out of the blue I heard a bloody Peacock. A peacock, in Fulham. What with the Polo round the corner, the trees filled with parakeets and Peacocks crying out from the lawns it was like being back in the Raj, what?
I haven't heard a peacock round here before so I have to assume that it has been hired for the event. How do you go about hiring a bloody peacock? Anyway, the RNP came quite close, and I cracked off a couple of shots (note that my photography is little better when the camera is not stuck on the end of high powered optics).
Now dear reader, if you are sitting in a more northerly section of blighty (regardless of whether or not you have a new BNP MEP - eek!), you may not see these parakeets very often (if at all) and sometimes people do come to the big smoke to see them.
Let it be known that they are noisy, distinctive in flight and an absolute arse to see when they sit in a tree.
Parakeet doing camouflage
Friday, June 05, 2009
This weekend, in the northern edge of my patch there will be a polo tournament.
Yep, that's right readers. A full blown 'high octane' polo tournament with ponies, pimms and toffs.
A little background. Hurlingham Park is a public park that had a running track on it and was popular with dog walkers, joggers and children. It is rubbish for birds because of this.
It was the venue for the Monty Python sketch Upper Class Twit Of The Year.
Next to Hurlingham Park is the Hurlingham Club which is pretty exclusive (the waiting list is about 15 years) and already has polo facilities and tennis and all that stuff. It also has the best collection of trees in the north side of the patch, and I can't get to it. It is where my recent Blackcap and singing Chiffchaff were.
Somebody thought that it was a good idea to rip up the running track, and put a new polo pitch in and sell it initially as being good for inner city kids (I shit you not) including the
local councillor. Fool. Encouraging kids to play polo (especially from some of the estates round here) rather than running other such, slightly cheaper, sports is facile in the extreme.
They have kindly put a picture on their website of part of the patch, which I have of course stolen for your delectation.
The green patch in the middle is where there was once facilities for commoners, but is no more.
What all this has to do with a birding blog, I'm not entirely sure. The particular piece of land could barely gather in a blackbird in the winter never mind any other winter Thrushes and in the summer it's good for feral pigeons so it's not like I've lost good habitat or birds.
I just think it's daft, and a little apposite and amusing that the upper class twits have returned to the park.
