Today I visited the public hides at the SOS Reserve of Venus Pool.
The surprise of the day was to find this Egyptian Goose. We see the rather strange eye-patch and the white panel in the wing that is so obvious when this species flies. Originally escapes / releases from wildfowl collections there is now a feral breeding population in the UK. This bird is not ringed, as birds in wildfowl collections are supposed to be, but whether it is truly ‘wild’ is open to conjecture.
Here you get 4 for the price of one. The smaller rufous-tinged Egyptian Goose has gone to sleep next to a sleeping Canada Goose while a Greylag Goose flaps to shake its feathers back in to shape following a preen. A Lapwing looks about showing why one of its other vernacular names is Green Plover.
The water level at Venus Pool is still low at the moment so most birds are rather far away for photography. This Grey Heron was fishing a bit closer.
And again.
Looking intently for its next meal.
Meanwhile the Little Egret is all dash and lunge. Note the yellow feet. On the closely-related New World Snowy Egret the yellow goes all the way up the back of the leg to the knee (well: ankle if we are anatomically correct).
A fine flying Cormorant. An adult judging by the all-black belly. Not sure why there are white feathers in the wing – a trick of the light on glossy feathers?
Not my best photo of flying Lapwings. Included here to show that other species attach themselves to Lapwing flocks – in the bottom right we see a Common Starling. Later in the season we could look for Golden Plover to join Lapwings.
Looking great in the afternoon Autumn sun this male Common (or Ring-necked) Pheasant. Yet to acquire the long tail of a breeding bird.
Magpie acting like an ox-pecker from Africa. The Hebridean Sheep seem rather sanguine about it all.
Not sure I would want a Magpie that close to my eye even if it was removing a tick.
One of the features of today’s visit was hundreds (if not thousands) of ladybirds. Ladybirds in unprecedented numbers. All those I checked were the invasive Harlequin Ladybird (
Harmonia axyridis). Here are two specimens.
And here is a third variant. The white ‘panda eyes’ seems to be a good feature to separate this in all its variants from ‘our’ ladybirds – and there are more than 20 of those.
(Ed Wilson)
