Brockwell Park, 15th June 2026

This was a late one.

I wandered down to the park after the Queen of Spades had gone dancing.  It was almost midsummer so the light was persistent, but what had been a fairly bright day had clouded over, flattening out the world’s contrast. 

Cygnets, we hardly knew ye.

Something has happened to the cygnets.

They were down from 8 to 6 when I took this photo.  A little later they dropped to 5.  Now, two weeks later, they’re all gone.

A man and his wife were having the same conversation I was thinking, and was on his phone looking for why they’d gone.

“They tried to fly,” he said.  “So they got relocated.”

As an explanation, that seems weird to me.  It was human intervention that moved them, I’m pretty certain - foxes aren’t likely to suddenly take 5 cygnets and flu wouldn’t have been so specific - but the cygnet in the photo above does not look two weeks away from trying to fly.  2 months, maybe.

Equally I can’t think of any reason why anyone would lie about why they were moved.  Possibly whatever information he’d found was just wrong, someone spitballing in a Facebook group.  Still leaves the question of why they were taken so early.

So turns out this was my last baby swan photo for this year.  Next April, there will be more.

Little Grebe

Also on the lake was this Little Grebe.

These are relatively rare in Brockwell.  Sometimes one or a pair will hang around for a while, but usually they’ll be gone after a couple of days and return a few weeks later.

They are tiny things, Moorhen-sized at most, and can be hard to spot because they tend to hang around in the far reeds, and can vanish in half a second with a graceful hopping dive taking them far under the surface, only to reappear again on the other side of the lake.

Reed Warbler

I spent ages trying to catch this bird.

While watching the Little Grebe, I noticed something small and brown flitting from one patch of reeds to another.  So I wandered over to the other end of the lake and stood there waiting for it to reappear.  Which it did, only to vanish back into the reeds before I could bring the lens up and focus.

So I stood there for half an hour, waiting for the flicker of wings, while a couple of guys behind me smoked weed and played piano-jazz on a loudspeaker.

Honestly, not a bad way to spend an evening.

The eventual reward was this photo - taken at a distance and cropped to almost 100%, but visibly a Reed Warbler, the first one I’ve seen in Brockwell, and the first one I’ve ever got a shot of.

Grey Heron

The usual park residents were also hanging around.  This Grey Heron was on the middle pond, showing off a good reflection.

Blackbird

Blackbirds can raise three broods in a good season, sometimes four.  By this point, the second is likely on the cusp of fledging, and that’s probably where these worms were headed.

From the way they were dangling out of his beak, my thought was to try and turn the shot into something Cthuloid.  I think it’s a decent concept but the composition doesn’t really work for it - it needs a low camera and the bird looking straight down the lens.  Still, fun to experiment.

Tufted Duck

This one was also an experiment into something a bit more arty.

By the time I took this there was very little light left, so I tried leaning into that by making the surrounding pond even darker and giving the duck a golden glow, playing with the idea of isolation.

I think there’s something there, but it needs work.  Not entirely sure what yet.