Saturday 25 June 2016

All the Little Owl family near the leaf yard were on view. The two owlets obligingly posed on their nest tree.


Their father was in the same tree.


And their mother was in a horse chestnut on the other side of the path.


There was also the sound of a Little owlet calling from an oak tree 30 yards southwest of the oak with the nest hole near the Albert Memorial, but I couldn't see it through the leaves.

The Moorhen family in the Italian Garden pond have seven chicks.


A Grey Heron was fishing in one of the other ponds, and caught a small perch tangled in weed, which it expertly removed and discarded before eating the fish.


The Coot family under the Bluebird Boats platform still have four chicks, thanks to their excellently sheltered nest.


The Black Swan had been preening and was flapping his wings, showing his smart new white feathers.


A lone Mute Swan cygnet was following its mother on the Serpentine. There are now only three cygnets on the Serpentine and three on the Long Water.


The Greylag Geese are in much better shape, and as far as I know have only lost one gosling. Here are the youngest four in the goose nursery near the Lido.


A Painted Lady butterfly was resting on a blade of grass on the west side of the Long Water.


A pair of Common Blue damselflies were mating near the bridge, a long and complicated business. The female is the one on the right.


This bright insect was on Buck Hill. I have no idea what it is, and the rear view, the only way I was able to photograph it before it flew off, doesn't help identification. It seems to have only one pair of wings, and therefore to be a fly of some kind. It has a remarkably long proboscis.


Update: David Element has just told me that it's a stingless parasitic wasp, Amblyteles armatorius. What I thought was a probsoscis is one of its antennae. It seems to have lost the other one.

7 comments:

  1. There seems to have been an explosion of those (or very similar) wasps in Dorset this year:

    https://flic.kr/p/JoNPqh

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  2. What accounts for the cygnet attrition rate? I'm surprised.

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    Replies
    1. Probably dog attacks play some part in it, but no one is sure.

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    2. I was going to ask about that, too. Is it normal, has such a high mortality rate happened in previous years?

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    3. No, in previous years the survival rate was much higher, sometimes 100 per cent.

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  3. Hi Ralph
    I'll be in London next week. My hobby is bird photography back in Canada. Would you be willing if I tagged along with you to see and to photograph the birds?

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    Replies
    1. Will be happy to show you round. Please choose a day when you arrive and put a comment on the latest page on my blog (you chose an old one, easily missed). Will meet you at the south end of the Serpentine bridge at 11.30 am. This should be easy enough to find.

      Sorry your comment appeared three times. It's a Blogger bug.

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