View Full Version : Shag in Brockwell Park!
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 15:25
Well actually, it might be a Cormorant...Enid Laundromat has just phoned to tell me there is one in the duckpond. She is the sort of girl who likes walking in the park in the rain and always alerts me to interesting Natural History in the vicinity....
SubZeroCat
19-08-2005, 15:26
I thought this was gonna be another one of those urban orgy/sex scandal threads :eek: :D
:cool:
I like cormorants.
I like shags too.
This thread is doomed you know, Mrs M :)
Isn't there a grey heron up at the park? I've seen one flying over Stockwell tube and my dad said it's from the park.
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 15:29
I see a fair few Heron...they always remind me of Pteradactyls when they are in flight. There is one on the Stockwell Park Estate pond too.
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 15:31
Just before I posted this thread there were 5 people viewing the Brixton forum...then suddenly there were 19. It has afforded me some amusement.
lang rabbie
19-08-2005, 15:31
If you join the Brockwell e-mail group, your inbox will rapidly fill up with high definition photos of interesting birdlife spotted in the Park. :)
You will then spend fruitless hours failing to find these birds when you visit Brockwell Park the following weekend. :(
purves grundy
19-08-2005, 15:33
Pretty far inland for a shag, although it wouldn't be unheard of.
I thought this was gonna be another one of those urban orgy/sex scandal threads :eek: :D
Yes, naughty Mrs M! *walks off disappointed*
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 15:34
Pretty far inland for a shag, although it wouldn't be unheard of. I've seens both Shags and Cormorants on the Thames.
SubZeroCat
19-08-2005, 15:35
Yes, naughty Mrs M! *walks off disappointed*
No! Enough of the incest. I want to be able to sleep well tonight....
oh, allright then... I looked too... for the wrong reasons... :rolleyes:
http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/Strond/shags.jpg
tbh I never knew there was a bird called a shag, which made the topic all the more cruel ;)
I didn't know they were so similar. I think I saw a shag on the Thames up by Barnes the other week then - I thought it was a cormorant at the time.
I think I've seen Shags in America.
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 15:49
I think they call them Black Shags in the US...not very au fait with North American Ornithology though hendo.
Id be more impressed if it was gannet :)
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 15:50
Enid only has a really crappy dappy camera with her. She's hoping to get a good pic, but she's a bit far away and the camera is only showing a wee speck with the ones she's taken so far.
did it lay it's eggs in a paper bag?
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 15:57
I was waiting for someone to come along with that one milesy!
I'm a bit spoilt for birds as I live near the River Lea and we have two reservoirs at Manor house and reservoirs at Tottenham Hale which house one of the biggest Heron and Comorant nesting sites in the UK.
I always think grey herons looked like something designed by an art nouveau artist.
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 16:00
Walter Crane?
gets coat
hoho! :D
Actually in Stamford Hill we have some exceptional Walter Crane stain glass in a rather odd church which was built for a victorian "free love" sect called the Agapemonites!
purves grundy
19-08-2005, 16:09
I've seens both Shags and Cormorants on the Thames.
Yeah, more likely to see em on the Thames. But on an inland pond in summer - far more likely to be a cormorant innit
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 16:12
To be fair, Enid reckons it's a Cormorant, but I didn't think 'Cormorant in Brockwell Park' would get many views...and Loki and PieEye have learned something new...which makes me a happy Magpie.
lang rabbie
19-08-2005, 16:28
hoho! :D
Actually in Stamford Hill we have some exceptional Walter Crane stain glass in a rather odd church which was built for a victorian "free love" sect called the Agapemonites!
Ooo! The one near Clapton Common with the sinister statues of the beasts of the evangelists on the spire, now occupied by the "The Cathedral Church of The Good Shepherd Ancient Catholic Church" with their monthly "animal blessing services". :eek:
*** KITTEN IMAGES ALERT ***
There's a picture of the Church Notice Board at:
clapton.freeservers.com/images/board.jpg
(you'll need to paste this into a browser address window after http://)
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 16:31
Won't allow linking, lang rabbie do it in 'longhand' without the www so we can paste in in....
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 16:44
Great pic...I've saved it as 'Ancient Catholic kitten'.
purves grundy
19-08-2005, 16:54
To be fair, Enid reckons it's a Cormorant, but I didn't think 'Cormorant in Brockwell Park' would get many views...and Loki and PieEye have learned something new...which makes me a happy Magpie.
Cormorants are great though. So primitive, always make think of pterodactyls :)
IntoStella
19-08-2005, 17:01
There's such a bird as a Balearic Shag as well, which is kind of appropriate.
pseudonarcissus
19-08-2005, 17:05
did it lay it's eggs in a paper bag?
The common cormorant or shag
Lays eggs inside a paper bag
The reason you will see no doubt
It is to keep the lightning out
But what these unobservant birds
Have never noticed is that herds
Of wandering bears may come with buns
And steal the bags to hold the crumbs.
MarkMark
19-08-2005, 17:08
Great stuff!
I'll be looking out for a shag or two at the festival tomorrow then :)
I'll start by spreading some of my seed all over the floor and seeing if any of the birds are up for it :)
Mrs Magpie
19-08-2005, 17:11
Enid said the only people in the park she could see were the people getting the festival ready and her. It was pissing down at the time though. Perhaps that's the best time to see wildlife in the park.
It was definitely a cormorant, it's beak was a weird shape (I got a much better look when it dived into the pond and popped up a few feet away from me) and it was HUGE, I could tell because it was almost as big as the Egyptian Goose it was sitting next to. Also, it's not quite true the festival setter uppers were the only people in the park - I shouted "BLOODY HELL IT'S ONLY A FACKING CORMORANT!" at a couple with a baby, but they walked away :confused:
Mrs Magpie
20-08-2005, 08:42
The birds in question.....
you decide.....
http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds/guide/e/egyptiangoose/index.asp
http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds/guide/s/shag/index.asp
http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds/guide/c/cormorant/index.asp
Louloubelle
20-08-2005, 08:59
all you ever wanted to know about shags
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormorant
http://www.spyder-rock.com/travels/chiti/tibetpics/tibet045.jpg
they're easy to tame if kept from chicks, in china they use them to fish with. Typically the fisherman will raise cormorants as part of the family, the birds are much loved and sleep in the bedroom with everyone else.
the birds dive for fish but are collared so they can't completely swallow the fish. The fisherman runs his hand up the birds neck, causing the bird to regurgitate the fish.
http://www.cinaoggi.it/english/travels/cormorants-at-erhai-lake.htm
geminisnake
26-08-2005, 18:17
tbh I never knew there was a bird called a shag, which made the topic all the more cruel ;)
:rolleyes: Blooming townie!! :p :)
Id be more impressed if it was gannet
Do you really want one in Brixton?? I can bring one down with me ;)
IntoStella
30-08-2005, 12:19
Dunno about a shag but I was lying on the grass near the ponds on Sunday afternoon, engrossed in the Radio 4 Classic Serial on my transistor radio (Le Grand Meaulnes - wonderful) when a Staff came bounding up and thrust its snout in my ear.
Most exciting thing that's happened to me for weeks.
Louloubelle
30-08-2005, 12:27
My friend was lying down relaxing at the women's pond the other day when 2 moorhens decided to fight each other, they ran at each other and locked their enourmously long feet before running off over my friend (she could feel their long feet tickling her tummy), shitting over as they did so.
her bag, skirt and sandals were completely covered in bird shit :eek: :(
gaijingirl
30-08-2005, 13:17
If you join the Brockwell e-mail group, your inbox will rapidly fill up with high definition photos of interesting birdlife spotted in the Park. :)
You will then spend fruitless hours failing to find these birds when you visit Brockwell Park the following weekend. :(
:D :D oh yes.. I regularly admire the pictures of birds that mean absolutely nothing to me... every time I go past the pond I can only find the one that was pointed out to me on a bird-spotting walk around the park.. and I don't even remember what that was called.. :rolleyes:
Guineveretoo
30-08-2005, 13:32
I was at Brockwell Park yesterday, but only saw the birds which the board told me I should see.
I often see herons around the Thames, where I think they look cute. However, when one invaded my garden pond, and had a multi course meal of my pet goldfish, I was less than amused. I now have a plastic, lifesize Heron who is supposed to scare off real herons.
I wouldn't mind a shag in Brockwell Park.
Cormorant cull 'threatens future'
A cull of up to 3,000 cormorants is to resume to keep the birds away from British fishing lakes and rivers.
The government has issued licences to kill the birds between now and April for the second year running.
Campaigners claim the killings will threaten the future of the birds, but anglers regard them as "unwelcome competition" said the BBC's Tim Hirsch.
:(
Full BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4199432.stm)
Mrs Magpie
31-08-2005, 06:55
:eek: But there's less than 3000 breeding pairs of Cormorants in Britain...this makes no sense at all. I suspect that the angling industry is too cheese-paring to put refuges in the water to protect their fish, which is the accepted long-term solution against fish-hunting fowl.
This is really depressing. I'm going back on me holidays and putting my nose back into escapist literature. :(
I was at Brockwell Park yesterday, but only saw the birds which the board told me I should see.
I often see herons around the Thames, where I think they look cute. However, when one invaded my garden pond, and had a multi course meal of my pet goldfish, I was less than amused. I now have a plastic, lifesize Heron who is supposed to scare off real herons.
I wouldn't mind a shag in Brockwell Park.
'twas there yesterday afternoon.
Perhaps a fullscale Urbanites go shagging in Brockwell Park expedition is required.
:eek: But there's less than 3000 breeding pairs of Cormorants in Britain...this makes no sense at all. I suspect that the angling industry is too cheese-paring to put refuges in the water to protect their fish, which is the accepted long-term solution against fish-hunting fowl.
This is really depressing. I'm going back on me holidays and putting my nose back into escapist literature. :(
There are many more pairs than 3000.
They have had a devastating effect upon rivers as well , which has upset biodiversity in many regions.
does one detect a similar situation to the 'Scottish Hedgehog' scenario ? ie kill 'em and be cruel , leave 'em and allow the destruction of a niche.
difficult to find a solution..... :(
Mrs Magpie
31-08-2005, 07:38
oops yes, I was going on 1998 figures....but I wasn't far out....
Mrs. Anne Campbell: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what estimate she has made of the breeding population of cormorants (a) in England and (b) on inland waters in England.
Mr. Bradshaw: The latest estimate of breeding cormorants in the UK and Ireland is provided by the Seabird 2000 survey. These data indicate that there are 3,145 breeding pairs of cormorants in England (including the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man). This includes the majority of the estimated 1,646 breeding pairs of cormorants at inland colonies in the UK.
lang rabbie
31-08-2005, 08:09
oops yes, I was going on 1998 figures....but I wasn't far out....
According to the RSPB
Vital Statistics
...
UK breeding: 7,600 pairs
UK wintering: 16,000 birds
http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds/guide/c/cormorant/index.asp
Edited to add: but I agree that DEFRA is still far too scared of the commercial angling industry when it comes to things like this.
Is it? personally I detest the modern impulse to interfere with everything possible- to play God. We -people- don't know everything there is to know about the whys & wherefores of cormorant distribution, yet they -experts- get in their grant applications to do their studies and create their habitat management plans and attempt to fit nature into checkboxes. One of the causal factors cited in support of the need to interfere is often previous 'inappropriate' management. The cormorant is a case in point, having previously been thought scarce inland in Britain (though more common in Ireland): its numbers are now thought to be increasing, but it's not clear whether this is a return to numbers common before it was driven away by industrialisation and wetland eradication. So to state as fact that they "upset biodiversity" is at best partial and at worst quite simply wrong: maybe increasing fish levels reduce the survival chances of smaller organisms or plants, which have no lobby group to protect them.
It's not only nature of course, it's everything they can get their grubby, interefering, grant-demanding hands on, like attempting to straighten 'bent' stones at Avebury (only been there 3000 years, obviously need tidying up now).
I've just detoured to the shop through the park and seen two cormorants drying their wings and a grey heron, all neatly grouped on the wooden platform in the big pond. Sadly my camera was nicked a couple of weeks ago and the phone shots are useless.
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