3rd March 2012 - Greenwich Park

The problem with taking me to Pets At Home is that I want every animal in there.  I fell in love with a tiny white Russian hamster that was in the adoption centre and Stuart named him Pele.  He kindly took me back for two weekends after I first saw Pele (although I think it was because KFC is on the way) and I awwed over him.  Pele wasn't there when we went last week, so whilst I was happy he had a new family, I was a little sad, so we headed to Greenwich Park to see what we could find.  We unfortunately didn't have binoculars with us - do you know how annoying it is to be surrounded by hundreds of birds and not be able to tell what the slightly further away ones are?  Grrrr.  Anyhow, we set ourselves a challenge of 20 birds before we left.  We went great guns with all the usuals until about 18 species, where we hit a plateau.  A quick note on the Pochard population at Greenwich.  You have the normal Pochard, the Red-crested Pochard (d'aww) and an escapee that's quite fun to see, the Rosy-billed Pochard.  We saw all 3 hanging out together.  After a fruitless search for Starling or any kind of Gull, we decided to head out of the park and home.  We nearly had reached the exit, when a Black-headed Gull swept over us and then Stuart grabbed me and pointed to a tree where 3 little Nuthatch were merrily clambering over the bark.  Twenty species, done and dusted.

1) Robin
2) Carrion Crow
3) Great Tit
4) Egyptian Goose
5) Blue Tit
6) Feral Pigeon
7) Parakeet
8) Wood Pigeon
9) Jackdaw
10) Moorhen
11) Mallard
12) Canada Goose
13) Red-crested Pochard
14) Coot
15) Tufted Duck
16) Pochard
17) Magpie
18) Blackbird
19) Black-headed Gull
20) Nuthatch

My year list for 2012 comes to 102.