College Lake – Greylag and Lapwings

Armed with my 100-400mm lens a short visit to College lake near Bulbourne seemed like a reasonable choice to make. Due to the excessive rains this year the pathway beyond the octagonal hide was flooded, so I took a chance that the hide might just allow me to get some shots.

The first to come my way were a pair of swooping Lapwings, and as I watched I began to get some idea of what was happening, as it seemed as if it was often the female who landed on the spit just beyond the hide and who was then dive-bombed by the male, but this was only supposition my part as I am not a clued-up bird watcher.

I decided I would try to capture what I took to be their mating ritual as the female would display on the ground, than as the male swooped she would squat lower as if in submission, and then they would fly off together for a while before she would land again and seem to repeat the action. I may have misinterpreted it all as the pair flew again together for a while before they went their separate ways and the female flew to an islet and started drinking casually as if she were no longer interested.

The greylag geese which interrupted these goings on announced their departure in typically raucous hooting and I managed to get a reasonable grouping of three in flight, as well as an earlier singleton landing on the water. In the milky sunshine, another pair made interesting reflections on the water as flew by.

Peacock struts his stuff and finally appeals to one of the ladies!

Mike’s next door neighbours have a peacock and thus far he has shown no interest in the peahens, so as he he was out, he had drawn an interested crowd of humans, several toting cameras! But if we thought it was going to be easy to capture shots of the event, or in particular to see him displaying his plumage in a courtship display to one of the peahens, we were in for a shock. He was in no hurry, and there seemed to be several moments when we the assembled shooters thought this is it, but finally he chose to strut around with more purpose and then finally we witnessed the display.

But for several minutes although a new lady had appeared she showed not the slightest interest – in fact she often showed disdain! Then we could see a slight melting of the Ice Queen and she moved closer, then bent here head and continued pecking in the grass, he would move around her and show his fine rear plumage; she would look up momentarily before continuing her interest in the ground. She seemed to tease occasionally by turning in his direction, sometimes moving a step nearer before resuming her lack of interest. He never closed his wings, he would occasionally do a shake as if to say: “Hey, look here lady it’s hard work keeping all these feathers up.”

You could not fault him for persistence; he was undeterred by her lack of interest, he seemed sure she would succumb to his charms, and slowly the interest she showed became greater than the spells of of disinterest, and she began to follow him, occasionally taking a look at rear, then she returned to face him and she gave a shudder as she plumped up her own feathers and this seemed to say: “OK, Big Boy, you’ve pulled!” and she demurely walked across his front as if saying: “Come along, follow me”.

The two pages of images give a clue as to the unfolding of the event – this was far from a private moment in this young beau’s life!