Tooting Common: Tufted Ducklings

More adorable (l) and submergent (r) in large.
This shot was taken less than a second earlier.

I met a friend for lunch at a rather wonderful little Lebanese restaurant on Trinity Road called Meza; I wandered across Tooting Common to get there, and swung by the pond to see who/what was there. There was a heron looking rather ominous, and a pair of coots with some large cootlings (still begging loudly). These tufted ducklings were being chaperoned by this female mallard; I saw something similar last year (blipped here), and it must be a case of brood parasitism (in which a tufted duck lays eggs in a mallard nest) or adoption of the ducklings (confused identity?), or possibly even intergeneric hybridisation (tufted duck x mallard hybrids are known...).

I had fun photographing them diving under the surface (to the confusion of the 'mother', as her ducklings kept disappearing). I've uploaded an album of Tooting Common Birds to Flickr.

Highlights:
Droplet-beaded duckling (and disappearing sibling)
High jump!
Droplet-beaded tufted duck (f)
Sploooosh
Cutest pic.
Preening swan