The story of mother goose

Since May I've been taking photos of the same Canadian goose and its goslings trying to capture the progress and finally decided to publish the pictures.

Our first acquaintance, May 13th:



They feed on green grass and couldn't resist the temptation of leaving the fenced pond area and crossing the road:



That made their mother anxious as people walk their dogs in that area and unlike humans dogs aren't usually amused with little cuties:



May 20th - only 4 out of 5 left. That was a sad part to witness number of them to decrease, but I assume that's a natural rate of mortality:



June 10th - only 3 left (another one was too far away to get into the same picture, but still there). Birds no longer look like cartoon characters starting to get ugly.



June 18th - and by "ugly" I meant that:



July 1st - another one disappeared:





Finally, today's shots:



The former helpless fluffies can be only distinguished from their mother at close range:



Good luck!

Learning something new every day

Recently I got a chance to ask a park worker about the turtles seen in the nearby pool, and to my surprise she revealed they're actually treated not as a part of the wildlife to take care of but as pests.


[here's a better photo made in the same park by someone else]

The story behind is that when the Ninja Turtles series were ridiculously popular 20 years ago terrapins were introduced to many parks in London. Alas, that didn't go well as soon it turned out they bred too fast causing threat to other species. Since that moment, no new turtles were released into pools. Even more, they are still looked for and removed every time ponds are dried for regular maintenance procedures.

Despite these measures the capital turtles have been struggling for two decades already, so far coping with the hostile attitude as well as with the unusual environment. Obviously, you can't expect less from ninjas.

Collateral damage

Two days ago I was amused with presence of exotic birds in believed-to-be-grey London, but there are also those who wasn't that lucky. The common and well-known house sparrows almost vanished in Britain :( As distinct from other urban species sparrow nestlings must be fed with insects necessarily and they are hard to find in London parks.

I only realized that I haven't seen a single small chirping fellow in a whole month when I noticed a special extinction warning sign at one of the Victoria embarkment small gardens.

Good luck to RSPB and partners and all hail the imperial sparrow!

Celebrating diversity

Nature here has something in common with local cuisine - it is believed to be dull and not very manifold by foreigners. But really similar stereotypes are no longer actual in both cases, for those were enormously enriched during the last century with novelties from all over the world growing into everyday life and culture.

Okay, coming to the point, I just wanted to show this low-quality picture of London parrots:



I've found an article about English parrots from 2004 but from that time as you can assume their population only rised. Birds from the picture above are green parakeets also mentioned in the text.