Birds in Kelsey Park

Went to Kelsey Park at Beckenham at the start of June and ended up taking lots of photos of birds. I particularly wanted to see the mandarin ducks, as a few days before I had been walking along my local river, the River Pool, when a pair of mandarins came out of the water and walked right up to me, presumably hoping for food. I had nothing for them and annoyingly I didn't have my camera with me. The next day there was no sign of them. Photo taken on phone -

In Kelsey the first one I saw was sitting by a tree. I took photos then got distracted feeding peanuts to squirrels. I soon found I had 5 mandarin ducks also after the peanuts, as well as a few pigeons.

I didn't notice any females. This appears to be a young male -

Mandarin ducks are native to the Far East but they are now widespread in the UK. See more on RSPB and  Wildlife Trusts . 

I then saw a cluster of Mallard ducks and thought they were fighting. But I soon spotted a female (hen) in the middle of scrum and realised the males were all attempting to mate with her. In the commotion, more males turned up. I Googled it later and found that gangs of young males are known to "gang rape" a female and this often leads to the female being seriously injured or even killed, or drowned if it happens in water. There is an interesting article about this happening regularly in Venice, posted in the Los Angeles Times. 

I posted a video on youtube

The RSPB page says "Mallards start to pair up in October and November, and start to nest in March. The role of the male is almost over once the clutch is laid. He remains sexually potent for a while in case a replacement clutch is needed, but gradually loses interest and joins other males to moult. At this time groups of males with no obvious duties often mate forcibly with females that appear to be unattached. This anti-social phase is short-lived and ends once moulting is underway."

A mallard couple -

There were several families of geese with fluffy goslings. Both Canada and Egyptian geese are found here. These goslings camouflage well against the grass -

Some larger Egyptian youngsters -

A gaggle of geese. Seems they need some form of birth control! The Canada geese seem to be becoming a problem in the UK as there are so many of them. They are an introduced species and don't migrate so are resident all year. They are really common in parks and around lakes. The smaller Egyptian geese are also introduced but are generally just in SE England.

There are notices saying do not feed the geese, and do not feed any birds with white bread, but people ignore these and still give white bread as can be seen above.

I went to the park in the morning after a bank holiday weekend. Several rubbish bins had been emptied, presumably by foxes or crows. 

The River Beck flows through Kelsey park, and then flows into the River Pool.

There are lots of grey herons in the park.