Tuesday 29 March 2016

Amsterdam

Easter was spent in Amsterdam. Signs of spring were surprisingly few. A single singing Chiffchaff was the only obvious summer visitor but in the zoo there were (wild) heron nests with already half-grown young. The zoo has a huge Grey Heron colony with nearly every large tree holding a nest. There were also free flying Cormorants nesting low down close to paths and we saw a male engaging in a bobbing, wing shivering display for which he got no payback.
We also had Storks nesting on a church tower in the suburbs and a couple of Peregrines down town.


this Great Crested Grebe (toppdykker) on a canal surprised us with the size of the fish is successfully swallowed







Ring-necked Parakeets were very common in Amsterdam and frequently took food from feeders on balconies

Here is a video of nesting and displaying Cormorants just metres away from us in the Artis Zoo








2 comments:


  1. Great capture and blog! That looks like a big fish (you know what kind?) caught here! So could the bird really manage to win the struggle and gulp that whole thing down (that long/skinny neck!) entirely okay?? Does the fish put up a good fight, if eaten, does the poor prey get swallowed wriggling all the way as well?!

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  2. The fish was a perch and I was quite sure that it would prove to be too big but the bird did indeed manage to swallow it. You see in the last picture that the tail is just sticking out and it then had one last gulp and swallowed it. The fish wasn't struggling either so maybe is killed by the tight grip on the head?

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