{"id":1839,"date":"2011-02-04T23:02:36","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T23:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1839"},"modified":"2013-11-09T19:29:58","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T19:29:58","slug":"smew-garganey-teal-goldeneye-mandarin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/smew-garganey-teal-goldeneye-mandarin\/","title":{"rendered":"Smew&#8230; Garganey&#8230; Teal&#8230; Goldeneye&#8230; Mandarin&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Despite the gloom and the ongoing struggle with the 400D, I had an outstanding number of first (or first &#39;decent&#39;) sightings today. I&#39;d wandered a little further along the lake in Regent&#39;s Park to a more secluded area and was astounded by the variety of species, several of which were entirely new to me.<\/p>\n<p>I&#39;ll start with the Smew, a water bird I&#39;d not seen (let alone photographed) before. This beautiful northern duck was parading along an iron grill which sectioned off a small part of the lake. It made a perfect background for the shot, as you can see. This is a male. Small numbers winter in the UK, but they are more at home in Scandanavia and Russia.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/smew_0402112954.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/smew_0402112941.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>Less startling, but almost certainly even more scarce is the Garganey (another new one for me). According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rspb.org.uk\/wildlife\/birdguide\/name\/g\/garganey\/index.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">RSPB<\/a> it is scarce, normally only seen in summer months in the UK and we have less than 120 breeding pairs. This one seems an early arrival.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/garganey_0402112919.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/garganey_0402112924.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>Next on the list is one I have seen before, but only photographed at silly distances. Its the teal, a pretty duck. The male is the one with the green head stripe.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/teal_0402112903.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/teal_0402112846.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>You can probably tell that I was enjoying myself. These shots were all taken in a 15 minute period, before I had to head back to work. The next one is another first, photographically at least. It&#39;s a Goldeneye, the name for once being easy to understand.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/goldeneye_0402112899.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>Then there&#39;s one I&#39;ve yet to identify (any duck experts please chip in!)<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/duck_unknown_0402112937.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>This last one I did recognize&#8230; it&#39;s unmistakeable. I probably have the odd photo somewhere though I couldn&#39;t swear to that. It&#39;s a mandarin duck. <br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/mandarin_duck_0402112868.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/mandarin_duck_0402112910.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/mandarin_duck_0402112880.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/mandarin_duck_0402112890.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>I think I have to leave it there for tonight. although I still have an unknown goose to identify; and as if to prove that it&#39;s not only cormorants that can roost in trees, I got a couple of shots of an Egyptian goose in a tree!<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 400D and EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.<\/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":[690,693,692,691,689],"class_list":["post-1839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-water-birds-birds-2","tag-garganey","tag-goldeneye","tag-mandarin","tag-smew","tag-teal","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1839","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=1839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}