{"id":1811,"date":"2011-01-04T23:01:51","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T23:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1811"},"modified":"2013-11-09T22:45:18","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T22:45:18","slug":"battling-coots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/battling-coots\/","title":{"rendered":"Battling Coots"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->I was in Regent&#39;s Park at lunchtime today. The whooper swans were preening sedately at the side of water.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/whooper_swan_0401115313.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>Red-crested pochards were swimming serenely along the water. <br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/red_crested_pochard_0401115323.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>Geese were chomping through acres of grass. The gulls were circling while the herons stood watch. And the coots&#8230; well the coots were going crazy.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/coots_0401115343.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/coots_0401115354.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/coots_0401115364.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>This looks highly territorial, though the aggression is part of their mating behaviour: a battle for the best bit of the lake. Except every bit of the lake is identical on this stretch, so the fighting is certainly more ritual than meaningful. But it was fun to watch, and they seemed quite happy with the game. <\/p>\n<p>The black-headed gulls were also exhibiting courtship behaviour. This one was contorting itself both in and out of the water, bending its neck in a low arc while calling.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/black_headed_gull_0401115393.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/black_headed_gull_0401115399.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>As for the park squirrels, they&#39;re still around, still greedy, and still great photographic subjects.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/squirrel_0401115468.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>It would be nice to have some sunshine. The cloud cover today blocked out the partial eclipse this morning, and there is not much prospect of improvement for the rest of the week. Still, it won&#39;t be too long now until spring \ud83d\ude42<br \/><span class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/natureblognetwork.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/natureblognetwork.com\/button.php?u=Words\" width=\"0\" height=\"0\" alt=\"Nature Blog Network\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/span><br \/><i>Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 40D  and EF 200mm f\/2.8L II USM.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[989],"tags":[1175,68,514,1141,339],"class_list":["post-1811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-water-birds-birds-2","tag-coot","tag-gull","tag-pochard","tag-squirrel","tag-swan","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}