Thursday 17 June 2010

First Flamingo watch

I did my second day of volunteering at Washington Wildfowl Park today. First duty was to spend two hours watching the 42 Chilean Flamingos and filling in the ethogram.
The time flew by as I observed their behaviour on a five-minute basis. On the whole I have learnt that Chilean Flamingos are amazing, graceful and very lazy birds.
They spent the majority of the two hours asleep in the grass whilst a few preened and gathered more mud for their nests.
Occasionally they fed and waded through the water before pecking at each other and wing flapped whenever the sun disappeared behind the clouds.
Although the shed in the flamingo enclosure is designed for the flamingos to sleep in, it belongs to a pair of Oystercatchers, which have young near it, and dive-bombed any flamingos which got too close.

After I had done my other duties I had a look at the wader lake where I soon spotted the pair of Avocet and their now well-developed young, avoiding passing Terns.
I spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the sunshine and looking at the Crane enclosure and watching a Little Egret hunt insects on feet away. Also I checked the American Lake and the diving duck and other wildfowl on it.






































Drake Buffelhead

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