The Red-crested Pochard, a crown of a duck

 

Some ducks are just made up. Or so it seems. The Red-crested Pochard (Netta Rufina) is such duck. Because whilst it is a living and breathing bird, I always think of the poor bloke that has to inflate and paint these ducks every day to make them look nice. Their distinctive red bill is the feature that makes them stand out, but the rest of the colouring is not bad either.

The duck stems original from Asia and thrives very well in moderate climates, as long as there are lakes with enough vegetation on the bottom of it. Red-crested Pochards build a nest by the lakeside among vegetation and lay 8-12 pale green eggs. The birds' status in the British Isles is much confused because there have been many escapes and deliberate releases over the years, as well as natural visitors from the continent. However, it is most likely that they are escapees that are now breeding wild and have built up a successful feral population. (Source: Wikipedia)

So far I have only seen them in parks (with water) and not in the actual wild. Be it as it may, the duck is worth writing an entire blog about, even if the female duck is less colourful.

 

 

I have come across many ducks since I started taking pictures of nature, but this duck is always a pleasant surprise. Which reminds me of an event I witnessed with a mother with ducklings and an envious neighbour, in St. James’s Park. The four pictures below show what happened when the mother (left) was challenged by the other female (right).

 

There is not much more that can be said about this beautiful but funny duck. The Dutch name is Krooneend which means “crown duck”. And therefore I will share some crown jewels I took over the course of the last years.

 

 

My home garden, a colourful venue

 

It is always with great joy, that I go walkabout and take some pictures of everything that is beautiful in nature. This whole weblog is hopefully prove that I have been able, so far, to succeed in that quest. But browsing through my archive I realised that there is quite some beauty in my own garden as well. And even this year only, whilst the nice weather is still to arrive, there have been some interesting and unforgettable moments that I would like to share with you.

Whether it is the Eurasian Jay that I was finally able to take a picture of, or the unexpected brown frog that almost jumped away before I could fetch my camera, or the incidental butterfly, there is indeed still some life in my garden. But why stop there, when there are beautiful colours to be immortalised through the lens?

I will start off with the freshly planted Osteospermum Passion Mix. As little as they are, the colours and the structure are mesmerizing. Especially their very dark purple harts, make this flower a delight to watch.

 

But since I am on a roll to show off my garden colours, how about my roses? As always, my very large yellow rose blooms first and the amount of rosebuds already counted, promises a sea of colour again this year.

I got an Old Port rose as a present. I had to dig a big hole to plant the rose, but I had to negotiate a lot of old roots. The result is hopefully worth the effort; The rose hasn’t bloomed just yet, but the bud looks very promising. Actually, I can’t wait.

 

So far, I have showed red, white and yellow..and a little bit of dark purple. Let’s show some more purple colours. What about this simple Chive (left), that is actually a herb to put in your food. But the flower is surprisingly beautiful. I found this between some weed that I had to clear.

But the very colourful Macrophylla (right) is also a must in your garden. Anyway it is in mine. Again, just recently received as a present but I am very pleased with it. The petals have this typically combination of groups of five.

 

And then there is the very radiant Dahlia (left again).

In this case we have an orange variant, but they come in many colours.

To finish this blog, I will show my visitors. they are the Eurasian Jay (Garullus Glandarius), The Comma Butterfly (Polygonia C-Album) and a simple brown frog.

Whilst there is so much to be seen in nature, it is always good to start close to home, in your own garden. I just did that and I hope the result inspires you to look for beauty at home.

 

 

 

 

Nectar required

 

We all know that honey attracts more bees than vinegar. But that is only because they just don’t like vinegar and it is nowhere to be found in flowers anyway. It is however also true that there are less and less patches to be found in cities and villages with bee-friendly flowers (and bee-friendly automatically means butterfly-friendly as well).

The ‘RHS Perfect for Pollinators’ label was developed in 2011 when writer and broadcaster Sarah Raven approached the charity with the idea of flagging up to gardeners plants most suitable for pollinators. As the Royal Horticultural Society says on the website : “…Bees visit flowers to collect nectar and pollen, which they use as food for themselves and the larvae in their hives or nests. By moving from flower to flower, they are important pollinators of many garden and wild flowers. Insect pollination is essential for the cropping of most fruits and some vegetables…”

To explain things further, you could read Gail Rajgor’s blog on this subject or the article in the Daily Telegraph from July 2012.

And please do, but you could also, for the moment, stay on this blog and look at the pictures I took of bees, bumblebees and butterflies drinking nectar. What more encouragement do we need to make sure that these insects can keep on finding and drinking nectar…and pollinate our plants at the same time.

This Large Earth Bumblebee (Bombus Terrestris) was caught trying to get the last nectar out of a purple Azalea at Kew Gardens. But it shows exactly what the idea is: you get the lust but you carry the dust…

The first bumblebees to be seen in spring are the queens – the queen is the only bumblebee to hibernate through the winter. The queen is much bigger than the workers, which appear later.

As soon as the queen has found some nectar, to replenish her energy reserves, she starts looking for a suitable site to build her nest.The nest site is usually underground; an abandoned mouse burrow is often used. Inside, the queen first builds a nectar pot, which will sustain her during bad weather. She also begins to build up a pollen larder, which will feed her brood. ( source: Wikipedea)

Please look further below at my pictures of a Carder Bee (Bombus Pascuorum), a Red Admiral butterfly (Vanessa Atalanta), a simple honeybee (Apis Mellifera) and a Small Skipper (Thymelicus Sylvestris) respectively. And look for the RHS logo next time you buy your flowers and plants. Thank you!

 

 

 

 

The simple but beautiful Gadwall, an update

The first blog that I wrote in this series was about the Gadwall (Anas Strepera). This very simple duck, that is called Krakeend in Dutch, is worthwhile showing again, since I have been taking pictures of it ever since. Therefore I present you, again, the “unknown duck”.

The Gadwall is a bird of open wetlands, such as prairie or steppe lakes, wet grassland or marshes with dense fringing vegetation, and usually feeds by dabbling for plant food with head submerged. It nests on the ground, often some distance from water. It is not as gregarious as some dabbling ducks outside the breeding season and tends to form only small flocks. This is a fairly quiet species; the male has a hoarse whistling call, and the female has a Mallard-like quack. The young birds are fed insects at first; adults also eat some molluscs and insects during the nesting season. The Gadwall is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies. (source: Wikipedea)

The male Gadwalls are predominantly grey with a distinctive black horizontal stripe through their eyes. The female Gadwalls look much like the very common Mallard Duck, but the bill is bright orange. Both sexes have a withe feather on their both sides.

They can be seen all year around in most of the places where you would see “normal” Mallard Ducks or Mute Swans.

I came across some very flexible Gadwalls, who seem to be swimming very calmly or grooming very fiercely.

Please enjoy this beautiful and yet very simple duck in the pictures below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kew Gardens: a handful of glasshouses with some plants and flowers

Princess of Wales Conservatory

The Royal Botanic Gardens, better known as Kew Gardens, are situated between Richmond upon Thames and Kew; it is a place of sheer beauty and horticultural diversity. I recently became a member, again, and in this blog I would like to show some of the pictures I took during my visits over the last three years. Although there are many different and very colourful flowers and plants to be seen throughout the year, I will concentrate more on the unique buildings in the garden.

 

UNESCO recognised Kew Gardens as a heritage site in 2003 as entry nr.1084 and describes the gardens as follows:

“..Set amongst a series of parks and estates along the River Thames' south-western reaches, this historic landscape garden includes work by internationally renowned landscape architects Bridgeman, Kent, Chambers, Capability Brown and Nesfield illustrating significant periods in garden design from the 18^th to the 20^th centuries. The gardens house extensive botanic collections (conserved plants, living plants and documents) that have been considerably enriched through the centuries. Since their creation in 1759, the gardens have made a significant and uninterrupted contribution to the study of plant diversity, plant systematics and economic botany..”

The Princess of Wales Conservatory, as seen left and above, is the newest glasshouse in the garden. It was commissioned in 1982 to replace a group of 26 smaller buildings that were falling into disrepair. It was named after Princess Augusta, founder of Kew, and opened in 1987 by Diana, Princess of Wales.

Inside are various computer controlled zones representing different climates from desert to tropical and rainforest. But a simple bed of Lavender outside already makes a spectacular impression for an innocent (and most of the time plant-ignorant) amateur photographer like me. I do like the modern design of this glasshouse. A modern rock garden with waterfalls outside the conservatory, as seen on the right, makes this part of the garden very pleasant to visit…and take pictures of.

 

If you want to get closer to some of the trees at Kew Gardens, the best way is to climb the 18 meters high Treetop Walkway. That climb and walk around is not for those with vertigo. Because the floor is very transparent and the whole experience is a bit wobbly.

But once you are upstairs and used to the height, you can see the top of the trees inside the walkway as well as Temperate House, another glasshouse that is situated close by.

And inside this glasshouse, there is of course an abundance of beautiful and very exotic flowers, like the one below that I do not know the name of, but is very, very nice indeed.

 

The oldest glasshouse at Kew Gardens is the Palm House. It was built between 1844 and 1848 by Richard Turner after a design by Decimus Burton. It is truly iconic, because when you see this building you immediately think “Kew Gardens”.

 

To finish this blog and to show that there are certainly a lot of colourful plants and flowers to be seen in Kew Gardens, two pictures of Azalea’s and Roses respectively. Of course taken at different times, because that is the fun: there is always something different to be seen, in full bloom or not, in Kew Gardens.

 

Teals, a variety of dabbling ducks

The top banner of this blog shows 7 male and 1 female Common Teals. Whilst I believed this to be a good choice because it is a nice stretched picture, I also believe this duck to be one of the most beautiful ones existing. And as I wrote before: there is nothing common about the Common Teal.

The dictionary describes the word teal as: any of several small, short-necked freshwater ducks, especially of the genus Anas, that feed on the surface of the water and often have brightly marked plumage. And if you go into the etymology of the word, you will find descriptions like: early 14c., probably from an unrecorded Old English word cognate with Middle Dutch teling "teal," Middle Low German telink, from West Germanic “taili”. As the name of a shade of dark greenish-blue like the colour patterns on the fowl's head and wings, it is attested from 1923. The Dutch word for teal is indeed Taling.

The Common Teal or Anas Crecca is a duck that can be seen mainly in the winter in England and The Netherlands, because they breed in Finland and other parts of Scandinavia during the summer. They can also be found in Russia in the summer.

The Dutch name is Wintertaling which translates as winter teal. They find their food just under the surface as they would, being a teal.

But their most remarkable feature remains their very bright colours with a green patch on the eye for the males and a very bright green feather on their left side for both sexes. 

In this blog I will show some pictures of different types of teals. They all are remarkably beautiful as I hope these pictures will show.

 

The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) is an intergovernmental treaty dedicated to the conservation of migratory waterbirds and their habitats across Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago. In June 1995 the final negotiation meeting was held in The Hague. The Meeting adopted the Agreement by consensus and accepted with appreciation the offer of the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to act as Depositary.

One of the ducks that is conserved under this treaty is the Cape Teal or Anas Capensis. They can be seen all year round in sub-Saharan Africa, but there are also some in Regent’s Park in London as well as in WWT London. Their distinctive red bill makes them very recognizable.

 

Another teal that is protected by AEWA is the Marbled Teal or nowadays called Marbled Duck. Because they do dive as well for their food. Their Latin name is Marmaronetta Angustirostris. They can be found all over Asia, with concentrations in Turkey and Armenia as well as Iraq.

They tend to be quite gregarious, especially during the nesting/breeding season. Before moving from the wintering grounds to the spring breeding grounds, pairs form strong seasonal pair bonds that lasting until incubation. The female incubates between 4 and 12 eggs.

They normally live near fresh and brackish shallow pools, boggy lakes and marshes with abundant vegetation, within lowland arid country. In the winter it uses larger, more open waters and temporary pools (Source: Dudley Zoological Gardens).

 

 

Again form the sub-Saharan region and again protected by AEWA is the teal with the most funny name and funny colours: the Hottentot Teal or Anas Hottentota.

Especially their very blue bill is a distinctive feature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crossing over to South America, you will find the Ringed Teal or Callonetta Leucophrys. They breed in north-west Argentina and Paraguay, but also in Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay. Their habitats include tropical, swampy forests and marshy clearings in well-wooded lowlands, as well as secluded pools and small streams.

I have seen them in WWT London as well as in Regent’s Park. They look a bit like those wooden ducks you use during the hunt to lure ducks towards you.

 

And to finish the tour of teals around the globe, here is an Australian teal: the Chestnut Teal or I Anas Castanea. And since survival is paramount in Australia, they are omnivores and are indifferent to saline water.

Chestnut Teals form monogamous pairs that stay together outside the breeding season, defend the nest site and look after the young when hatched. Nests are usually located over water, in a down-lined tree hollow about 6–10 m high.

Sometimes nests are placed on the ground, among clumps of grass near water. The young hatch and are ready to swim and walk within a day. (source: Wikipedia).

 

 

Apart from the Common Teal, the only other native teal in England is the Garganey or Anas Querquedula. They are true globetrotters and arrive in the spring, around May in Europe. But so far, I have not seen one. Therefore I have to settle for the Wikipedia webpage…and keep looking for them. A nice mission for the coming period!