Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 6)

Another walk today, in better weather, although in the last hour of daylight, as the sun sank towards the horizon, it turned very chilly indeed. But we reached our goal, the lake in the northwestern corner of Tottenham Cemetery, and having bought some bread along the way did not disappoint the ducks and geese -- who clearly expect to be fed by visitors, since their response to the appearance of humans is to come straight over to them. Almost all of them, anyway; the tufted ducks didn't seem to be interested, and nor did some smaller, more elusive waterfowl which Judith theorised from our copy of Jonathan Elphick's The Birdwatcher's Handbook might be teal.

Other species sighted were Canada geese (which, like the Canada geese in Lordship Rec, come right up to you and peck in the direction of your fingers), mallard, coots (which also came over for some bread), and moorhens (which didn't). There were also what we think might be a couple of hybrid species: three examples of a cross between mallard and some sort of domestic duck, which had grey heads, a white collar, brown chests and mostly white wings and bodies (although one of them had some black stripes on the wings); and one goose which might have been a cross between a Canada goose (same size and colour of body) and a white or a greylag goose (white head on a shorter and thicker neck, which was also white), with a beak more like that of a duck's and pronounced pinkish-orange feet. One of the photographs here shows that goose alongside the Canada geese, for the purposes of comparison.

The other photographs show Judith casting bread upon the waters; a scrum of mallard ducks fighting for a piece of bread (this photograph also shows two of the hybrid ducks referred to earlier): and a Canada goose which appears to be blind in its left eye, or so we deduced from the fact that it didn't seem to respond to anything happening on its left-hand side and the curious manner in which it kept twisting its neck to keep things in view. Ordinarily, a bird with such a deformity would not long survive in the wild; the fact that this one is living in Tottenham Cemetery and receives food from visitors as well as whatever it can find for itself is presumably what keeps it alive.