Barnes Green: Unexpected Birds!

She's lovelier in large ("L").

I had a lovely afternoon at various ponds! I visited Eagle Pond first with my mother but the Goosles were all on the island and there were many fishermen (some of whom had a portable generator which generated the soft strum of an engine, and the smell of petrol. Woo...). We quickly moved on to Wandsworth Common and saw Mrs. Milky Mallard with her four ducklings which are now fairly feathery! The all brown duckling's plumage looks the same as the others, but its downy head is still all brown. There were millions of tufted ducklings flitting about with various mothers; one had 17 at one point (including a mallardling...) and the mothers seem pretty chilled about who is looking after their ducklings... In reality, I think that they are unable to tell which are their's (although the tufted duck with the mallardling in its brood did chase it away when it eventually noticed). I think that the ducks can tell the difference between "one duckling" and "several ducklings" but no finer gradations than that.

I then went to meet a friend in Barnes: we grabbed a coffee and sat by the pond from mid afternoon until the light was going and it was feeling like evening. We had a wonderful chat and enjoyed the goings on of the pond and its surroundings. I saw a flash of blue with an orange throat but couldn't quite believe that I'd seen a kingfisher; my friend looked it up, and one was sighted on the pond at Barnes Green yesterday which made me feel rather chuffed at my fleeting observation! I've never seen one in London before... They're so striking; 'though I doubted myself (I literally couldn't believe it!) I instantly knew what I thought I saw as the blue and orange are very distinctive... We saw the adorable Canada gosling which has now developed many feathers (although its back is still downy), and was thrilled to see a female of genus Aix. I knew that she was a female mandarin or a female wood duck; her eye streak is much wider than I've seen before (like this) which made me think that perhaps I was seeing my first wood duck (they have a more teardrop shaped patch around their eye), but on looking at my photo at home (with reference pictures) I know that she is a mandarin. Beautiful nevertheless.

We also saw Judith Kerr (author of The Tiger Who Came To Tea, Mog, and other classic children's books); she posed with two young girls as their father photographed them which was rather sweet. I thought that I'd (comfortably) refer to her as another "unexpected bird", but that now feels rather inapt...