{"id":1828,"date":"2011-01-24T23:01:03","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T23:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1828"},"modified":"2013-11-09T21:10:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T21:10:59","slug":"first-sighting-alert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/first-sighting-alert\/","title":{"rendered":"First Sighting Alert!"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

An overcast day, far from ideal conditions but it did produce a personal 'first sighting'. Well actually it was a first 'hearing' then sighting. I was by the lake in Regent's Park (where else?) and above all the hooting of geese, squawking of coots and gulls, and yabbering of ducks I heard an ear-splitting squawk! Yes a squawk… as in parrot. I looked, and sure enough there was my first ever sighting of the now naturalized ring-necked parakeet!
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It was across the water on the island, and a long lens is what you want at such moments (and what I had). That's a crow on the right.
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There were two of them, so hardly a flock but it will do for me!
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Not a first as such, but I also caught a small flight of tufted ducks…
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Some herons…
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And for a touch of avian inelegance, an Egyptian goose coming into land on the lake.
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Finally, here's a couple of shots from a longer sequence of a coot in its take-off routine… fast running on the surface of the water and eventually taking to the air…
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