Nada

Haven't really seen much over the past couple of days but letting the blog go quiet so early on seems wrong. Have some photos of the bits and bobs I've been seeing. 4 Common Gulls have been present along my stretch of the river and on one day this week at least 6 were at my school along with the hundreds of Black-headed Gulls feeding on the general detritus of humanity (aka crisp packets), which is definitely more than I saw at any one time last year.

As well as photogenic common gulls today there was also a pigeon behaving very oddly, dive-bombing the black headed gulls and also happily plonking itself down on the river pretending to be a little auk, this was the only reasonable photo I managed to get but it was very odd behaviour indeed.

Aquatic pigeon, evolution in progress?

I also went to London Zoo on thursday in order to do research for a piece of coursework for my Biology AS. I got a couple of nice shots but don't feel they've got any place on a bird blog. One that does, however, is this shot of the local House Sparrows taking advantage of some meat left out in the Ruppell's Griffon Vulture area. A pretty weird sight.

 House Sparrow with fresh Kill.

Had a really interesting talk from a Cetacean researcher about mass beachings and spent the rest of the day wandering around the zoo with my camera like a numpty. Overall the trip reminded me how little of a fan of zoo's I am :( I understand the value they hold for captive breeding programs and behaviour research and the like but to see these enormous vultures in a cage where their lives extended to flying from one end to the other and waiting to be fed, as much as it may be a crass anthropomorphism of the birds, made me sad to see them so confined. I guess zoos just aren't my kind of thing.

Have a shot of a Lesser Black Backed Gull dreaming of space travel to end things on a lighter note.

 One day...