Eel Meat Again (Central London Wildlife)

Central London is a great location for wildlife. On a brief visit today (work) I even saw an elephant!
Part of the Elephant Parade exhibit on the South Bank at London Bridge

There were also the usual array of cormorants and coots, but the show stopper was a black-backed gull, caught consuming another river dweller (an eel). The first shot was taken as the gull landed, and regurgitated his catch.

As he pecked away, I moved along the bank for a better vantage point. This next sequence is the consuming moment.

This was taken about three hours later… not necessarily the same bird 😉

As for the home front, the cubs were out again en masse last night, and this evening one of them braved the garden on its own. In fact the cubs were flitting around at the back of the garden several times during the evening. This little one, startled by one of the hedgehogs emerging from the adjacent flower bed, grabbed as much as he could and disappeared back to the safety of the far side of the garden fence.

Nature Blog Network
Camera note: all gull shots taken with the Canon 40D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. The fox cub was photographed with the EF 24-105 F4L IS USM lens

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This Post Has 12 Comments

  1. cakkleberrylane

    14 May 2010

    Great series of shots of the gull and the eel! And it's so nice to see the little foxes becomming so mature!

  2. gdare

    14 May 2010

    It seems that stomack of the gull is just a little bit smaller than its entire body :insane:

  3. Flying Red Fox Blog

    14 May 2010

    Wow it would be cool to see a real live Elephant wandering down the streets of central London 😆

    The Cub looks so cute! 😀

  4. SittingFox

    15 May 2010

    How come gulls never choke? :yuck: :ko:

  5. Words

    15 May 2010

    Lois, thanks! The cubs are getting braver by the day.

  6. Words

    15 May 2010

    Mark, there are loads of those elephants. It seems they're all over London until July!

  7. Words

    15 May 2010

    Adele, that's one of nature's mysteries. I'm surprised it could fly with that amount of payload!

  8. Words

    15 May 2010

    Darko, how right you are! It really is astonishing that they can swallow an eel like that.

  9. Words

    17 May 2010

    Thanks Erwin!

  10. Ukwildlife

    13 Jun 2010

    Nice stuff. Ive seen both a cormorant and a heron struggle with eels in the past. Both managed to swallow the eels many times but the eel would keep crawling back up the throat and out again!

  11. Words

    14 Jun 2010

    Neil, it was good moment to see. A shame I was too far off for a decent shot.

  12. Wulpen

    19 Oct 2012

    Great a lovely set of Photos

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