Black-headed Gull: Flying Goggles

See its smile in large ("L").

The weather today has been pretty grim: I took photographs of our Dracaena marginata indoor tree at home to use as an indoor blip. I'm not using them though because my mother had an old loaf of bread, so we went to feed the gulls on Mount Pond... We were hoping that by being all optimistic, the rain might ease up by the time that we arrived at the pond, but that didn't quite pan out as hoped: it rained rather persistently, but we still had a nice time. I took lots of photographs of the black-headed gulls and their aerobatics, and also of an unusual-looking crow* that was skulking about looking menacing. AND, there was a single swan on the pond: there haven't been any swans on Clapham Common since the family that I was watching left on 7th January.

Anyway, I got some fun pictures of the gulls swooping and catching bread in the air, but this shot is just too amusing: the mature gulls mostly now have black heads, and the white rings around the backs of their eyes make them look slightly cross-eyed, and slightly as if they're wearing flying goggles. This one was looking very smiley as it approached to catch the bread that my mother was lofting up for them...

*I've been trying to determine the cause of this crow's unusual brown feathers (both on its head, and its wings/tail): other birds with similar patterns have been attributed either to an unusual moulting pattern in a HY/SY young crow (a crow going into its second calendar year that has not yet moulted some of its juvenile feathers), or an adult crow with a pigment deficiency (such as leucism). It is rather ragged-looking which might suggest wear, but the brown colouration is too consistent, and apparently wear in crows doesn't cause loss of colour.