An awkward meal

A Grey Heron had caught a large pike under the Italian Garden fountains and taken it to the swan nesting island to swallow it.

It had considerable difficulty and I thought it wasn't going to manage. It had its back turned when it finally succeeded, so I couldn't film the crucial moment. Afterwards it had a drink to wash down its heavy meal.

The herons at the nest on the island were both keeping an eye on the chicks. I still haven't managed to see these, as the nest is high and you have to look up at a steep angle.

Another perched on the basket which was put up to encourage them to nest in it. They much prefer nests they have made themselves, despite the considerable labour involved. Also, two baskets were put up and one of them fell down, so they're right to mistrust the remaining one.

A Herring Gull had caught a crayfish and was being eyed enviously by two others as it swallowed it whole. It seems surprising that their gizzard can break up this hard spiky creature.

Pigeon Eater is getting the pure white head of his summer plumage.

A party of Egyptian Geese had a wash together before going to the lawn to graze.

Reed beds need cutting down to the ground every few years to prevent them from going thin and straggly. The cut reeds provide a good hunting ground for Moorhens looking for insects.

Starlings arrived on the railings before going down to hunt in the cut stems.

 A Starling in a patch of long grass gave me a contemptuous stare.

The Robin by the Henry Moore sculpture was also looking annoyed at being photographed before it got its pine nuts.

The Kensington Gardens Chaffinch intercepted me beside the Round Pond. Today he had brought his mate along with him.

She is an elegant bird and has so far managed to avoid the virus infection that affects Chaffinches' feet. For some reason it seems to hit males much harder than females.

The male Chaffinch from the Rose Garden had come out and was waiting on the back of a bench by the Serpentine Road.

The usual crew arrived for their food, including this Blue Tit.

A Green Woodpecker came down on the lawn.

One of the few pure white Feral Pigeons lives in the Rose Garden. Most of our white pigeons have black tails.

Even in January there are a few roses.

The importance of leaf litter

Unlike the evicted Blackbird in yesterday's video, this one has all the leaf litter in the woodland at the bottom of Buck Hill to dig in. There are still a lot of wild areas in Kensington Gardens undisturbed by the management's quest for tidiness, and it's in these that the park's small population of Blackbirds and other thrushes is hanging on. But the number of Blackbirds has fallen by over 90 per cent in the last 50 years, largely owing to the use of leaf blowers to remove leaves from the shrubberies.

A Robin posed grandly in a yew tree above her, waiting for me to stop photographing, after which it collected five pine nuts from my hand.

In the Rose Garden, the Robin that is a refugee from the smashed shrubbery hasn't become that confident yet ...

... and probably the female Chaffinch never will. It's hard to feed them on the ground, because Feral Pigeons quickly notice what's going on and crowd in.

However, all the Blue Tits are now coming to my hand. They never did while the shrubbery was intact, but hunger has made them bolder.

A Robin near the Speke obelisk has also started hand feeding.

I was besieged by Great Tits when going through this area, which the Robin was furiously trying to chase away without much effect.

A Great Spotted Woodpecker appeared for a moment at the top of an old chestnut tree before flying away.

A first visit to the Round Pond didn't reveal the Little Owl, but towards sunset she came to the back of the hole and looked out, waiting for the people to go away so she could hunt.

A Wood Pigeon lurched and flapped in the ivy hedge at the back of the Lido trying to reach uneaten berries.

The Grey Heron in the nest with chicks was brought a twig by its mate.

It carefully arranged the present on the edge of the nest. The chicks are still too small to be seen looking out of the nest, though they could be heard in yesterday's video.

The usual heron was fishing in the reed bed under the Italian Garden, one of the few places where the greedy Cormorants couldn't penetrate to clean out the fish.

But the patient bird has quite a wait for a fish to appear in a gap. Zooming out from the scene shows that it has trampled down a wide area of reeds in its hunt.

This is one of the two rival Common Gulls that compete to perch on the sign near the Dell restaurant. Just as I was taking the picture the other gull swept in to knock it off. They are evenly matched and neither of them manages to stay in place for long.

A pair of Egyptian Geese noisily claimed territory in the top of a tree on Buck Hill. The tree they display in is never the same one as the female nests in, as that would expose her to predators waiting to seize eggs or goslings during her brief absences to feed and drink.

There is a tree with a suitably large hole nearby, and I will keep an eye on it.

The teenage Mute Swan that is the sole survivor of the cygnets hatched on the island has had a tough life and has become very aggressive. Here it's threatening some adults near the Triangle.

More sound from the Grey Herons' nest

After the first faint clattering of a begging chick several days ago, the Grey Herons' nest on the island has been silent every time I've passed. But today there was quite a lot of noise, louder now. You can never tell whether it's one chick or more -- which it probably is -- from the sound. Often they don't beg together.

The single heron in the nest at the west end of the island was trying to pull off a twig. It's always a struggle for them.

The ice has now completely melted, and the Pochards have returned to the Long Water.

 One of the newly arrived Great Crested Grebes was fishing at the Serpentine outflow, well away from the two resident pairs.

The dominant Black-Headed Gull by the landing stage looked annoyed as Mallards cruised past.

The Robin at the southwest corner of the bridge is now confidently coming to feed from my hand.

The very calm Dunnock was foraging in the cleared ground across the path from the Buck Hill shelter. It takes no notice at all when you lean over the railings and point a camera at it.

A long line of Starlings were enjoying a communal bathe on the edge of the Serpentine.

The female Blackbird, evicted by the destruction of the Rose Garden shrubbery, was digging in a flower bed, but didn't find anything that I could see.

Turf is being laid in the places where the shrubs have been ripped out. I am dubious about the claim that the shrubbery will be reinstated.

The small birds have things a bit easier, as there are still trees and the big hedge on the south side. A Blue Tit found a small larva under some lichen.

It visited a teasel, a useful source of seeds.

The Coal Tit was whizzing around, always very hard to photograph. It was also hard to feed as there were pigeons on the ground, but I eventually got a pine nut to it.

A Robin was also having difficulty with the pigeons, but succeeded later in a flower bed.

The male Chaffinch was also waiting in a flower bed, though his mate was not in sight.

Carrion Crows were rooting in the herbaceous border, looking for insects and worms.

There is always a pair of crows on the edge of the Rotten Row riding track, which were turning over fallen leaves. They came over quick enough when peanuts were offered.

The lawn is always soggy, and part of it gets flooded after rain because of a defective drain. It attracts gulls hoping to bring up worms. A young Lesser Black-Back, just beginning to get dark grey feathers, came over for a drink at the Huntress fountain.

The ice recedes

The ice on the Serpentine is now mostly melted. A Mute Swan flew past the last remaining patch by the outflow.

But a lot remains on the Long Water. The two Mallards and the Gadwall from the Italian Garden were wandering around on it. As usual, the female Mallard was with the Gadwall drake and not with the Mallard.

A Herring Gull rolled a conker around.

When it got bored with that it seemed mainly interested in its own reflection.

The ice doesn't deter the Coot at Peter Pan from endlessly fussing about with its nest.

A flock of Canada Geese grazed in the Diana fountain enclosure, a favourite place as the grass is well maintained and dogs are excluded.

A fully grown Mute Swan has 20,000 feathers, and these teenagers have to spend a lot of time preening.

A Grey Heron was poking around in the upper nest on the island, so it still seems that the chicks are there. But there's no way of telling, as the nest is high in a tree and they won't be visible until they have grown a lot bigger.

A Robin near the Speke obelisk, which I haven't seen before, had the good sense to realise that pine nuts thrown on the ground were worth investigating.

The one near the Henry Moore is a regular customer, but is still only taking one pine nut at a time and then flying back for the next one. Other Robins stand on your hand and collect as many as they can carry.

The usual male Chaffinch in the circular hedge in the Rose Garden ...

... had brought in his mate today.

The Coal Tit ...

... and several Blue Tits ...

... were joined by the male Blackbird who had lived in the shrubbery before it was destroyed -- they are now digging it up literally root and branch with an excavator. Normally very shy, he came out and took several raisins, a sign of how hungry he is with his hunting ground gone.

Wood Pigeons and Feral Pigeons were looking for insects in the patch of bleached daffodils beside the Serpentine Road which was covered by a ramp leading up to the Wasteland. The plants still look very sad, but in previous years they have always made a full recovery and flowered only slightly later than the unaffected ones.

The Albert Memorial shone in the low sunlight.

Pauline Gilbertson was at the Wetland Centre in Barnes and got a good picture of a Bittern doing its trick of looking like a clump of reeds.