Weather: overcast but bright, sultry. From 5:45pm.
A visit after work to check out reports of a garganey being posted on the London Birders website. Plenty of bird activity in the park but much of it feral or pinioned so the main challenge was what to consider as tickable. I settled on species that had unpionied wings & which were not obviously exotics, a rough rule of thumb to be sure!
I entered from the Baker Street side entrance & walked north along the west side of the Boating Lake: Coot, Starling, Tufted Duck; lots of Pochard which seemed a bit out of place; Grey Heron from the heronry on the lake's islands; Mute Swan, Canada Goose, Greylag Goose, Mallard, Great Crested Grebe, Magpie, Crow, Woodpigeon, Moorhen.
Off the north-west corner of the Boating Lake another small pond had a couple of Egyptian Goose & several pairs of Red-Crested Pochard, obviously the latter are from feral stock but nonetheless able to fly they are breeding quite merrily in the park. At this end I could also hear Song Thrush, & got a view down the boating lake for Herring Gull, Lesser Black-Backed Gull &
Cormorant which were all congregating on the stumps in the water.
Amongst the vegetation at the end of the lake: Wren, Robin, Chaffinch. At this point of the lake there is an exotic wildfowl collection which includes many native birds, in particular I saw a pair of Garganey & assumed they were the ones reported. However I soon realised that they were part of the collection & their wings were pinioned. Also where they were paddling had been cut-off from the main body of water of the lake so unfortunately they were captives!
I quickly moved on after that & spotted a Common Tern hawking over the water & after hearing it eventually saw a Little Grebe. I contined round the east side of the lake for Blackbird amongst the trees & in with the tame geese was a slightly nervous-looking male Ruddy Duck which I ticked because it looked out of place with the other confident bread-grabbing wildfowl & because if it was pinioned it wouldn't have been able to get over to this side of the water.
Continuing along for Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long-Tailed Tit & Ring-Necked Parakeet.
Next to the water was a lone Shelduck though it was suspiciously near to another widfowl collection so this one was probably captive & not just passing through on the way to the nearest estuary. However a species that definitely wasn't moving through was Mandarin which has a naturalised population in the UK so I felt safe ticking it here. I saw a lone male initially & then a pair.
Finally, saving the best til last, I reached the stumps in the water that the gulls & cormorants so enjoy & after a quick scan was surprised by a resplendent male Yellow-Legged Gull which I later found out had also been in the area for a few days.
33 species, but a few of dodgy tick status!
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