Little Owl keeping warm

Sunshine brought out the Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery. It was slightly chilly, so he was fluffed up to keep warm.

So was the single Robin at Mount Gate.

A Blue Tit posed in an osmanthus bush in the Dell ...

... and there were more in the cercis in the Rose Garden.

A Coal Tit appeared for a moment in a tree by the gate, and I got just one shot before it flew off.

It was feeding time for the three younger Grey Heron chicks on the island and they were flapping about frantically.

You don't usually see a heron swimming, but this one was lured out from the island by someone throwing prawns to it. Evidently this has happened before, because the heron was most enthusiastic about snatching them.

A Great Crested Grebe rested in the still water.

The grebes nesting in the reeds on the Long Water were adding some twigs and algae to their soggy nest. These ill-made constructions keep sinking and have to be built up regularly to keep them in existence. It hasn't occurred to the grebes that they could make a much better nest from reeds, as Coots do and indeed grebes do in places like the Norfolk Broads where reeds are the only availabel material.

The Coots nesting at the bridge now have at least four eggs. Probably more are on the way.

The Coot on the post at Peter Pan ignored a Cormorant ominously above it.

The Egyptian Geese with the six oldest goslings had crossed the lake and were at the boat hire platform.

The pair with seven at the Lido took them to feed on the grass at the back.

Most of the wallflowers in the Rose Garden are now too withered for bees, and this Hairy-Footed Flower Bee had moved to the pansies.

A Dark-Edged Bee Fly, Bombylius major, preferred a grape hyacinth. This is the first one of these sinister parasitic flies I've seen this year.

Another first for the year: a Common Wasp at the southwest corner of the bridge. It was scraping bits off a bramble stem, evidently intending to build a paper nest.

The first cowslips are coming up here.

Participants in a charity walk in the park were spurred on their way by the Voodoo Brass Band. The large brass instrument is a sousaphone, created for the 19th century American composer John Philip Sousa for use in marching bands. It is curved around the body of the player to keep him from knocking over the marcher next to him.

Blackcap

Blackcaps have been singing around the Long Water for several days, but stayed hidden in the bushes. Today a male consented to come out in a treetop by Temple Gate.

A Long-Tailed Tit preened on a twig above its nest by the leaf yard.

The Coal Tit pair at Mount Gate came out for pine nuts ...

... and the Blue Tits were waiting too.

A Robin sang by the Serpentine Gallery, not one of my regular customers but it came down for pine nuts on the ground.

A Starling at the Lido restaurant was enjoying a chip.

A Green Woodpecker uttered its sarcastic laugh from a lime tree on Buck Hill.

A Carrion Crow collected bits of dead grass to line its nest in a tree near the Dell.

Pigeon Eater, whom I hadn't seen for several days, was with his mate in their usual place at the Dell restaurant.

A Cormorant at Peter Pan jumped on to a post ...

... and landed short, but managed to flap its way up.

The Little Grebes were on the far side of the Vista, but I didn't manage to get both of them in the same shot.

The dominant Mute Swan and his mate had come on to the Serpentine, and he was showing off to her by chasing another male.

The Black Swan was with 4GIQ and was keeping her proper mate at bay. I am sorry to say that she was also raising her wings in defiance. She is a shameless hussy.

The six Egyptian goslings at Fisherman's Keep are growing fast. They huddled and fidgeted in a heap against a chilly wind until their parents called them over to the grass.

As I was writing the blog I heard that one of the parents had attacked and injured a Grey Heron that had come too close to the goslings. The bird rescue group are trying to get the heron and attend to it.

They have been pressuring the management to at least put up notices about people letting their dogs run free around the lake, and have sent them some horrifying pictures of swans and geese injured by dog attacks, which are sadly frequent. They have finally got some results. But the risk of anyone being prosecuted is almost zero, as we no longer have the Royal Parks police.

The only bees visible in the Rose Garden were male Hairy-Footed Flower Bees. One fed on a pink hyacinth.

The Royal College of Art is right next to the park -- it's that hideous black building that spoils the view on the west side of the Albert Hall. Students often come into the park to photograph their efforts, and today on buck Hill there was a display of what looked like entrails hung on a pole.

Goldcrests

A mild sunny day started the Goldcrests singing, making them easier to find than usual with these tiny elusive birds. This one was in a pittosporum bush in the Dell ...

... and this one in a yew at Mount Gate.

Ahmet Amerikali was in Battersea Park and found a Firecrest.

The Coal Tit pair at Mount Gate were chasing each other through a holly tree ...

... and the usual male Chaffinch was waiting on the next tree.

A little ornamental conifer in a flower bed in the Rose Garden made a perch for a Blue Tit ...

... and a Wren.

The Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery was there when I came into the park, by one of the holes in the hollow old chestnut ...

... and as I went home I saw him again on a higher branch, and he was well worth a second picture.

The sunshine brought people to the terrace of the Lido restaurant, and Starlings waited on an umbrella for their chance to grab scraps.

A Grey Wagtail was hunting midges from a post at the bridge ...

... where the Coots were having several tries at fitting a twig into their already large nest.

The dominant Mute Swan and his mate's neglect of the nesting island in the Long Water has allowed in a pair of Canada Geese ...

... but on the Serpentine two pairs of swans had their eyes on the nest site behind the railings at the boathouse.

A pair of Egyptian Geese at the Triangle enjoyed a brisk wash.

The pair at the Lido still have eight goslings.

There were several Yellow-Legged Mining Bees in the Rose Garden again. When not browsing on flowers they seem to like heuchera leaves as a place to rest. I also saw this yesterday. Maybe the yellow colour attracts them, as they were also choosing yellow wallflowers.

A Common Drone Fly, Eristalis tenax, hovered in front of a black sports bag. If there had been anything else in the background I couldn't have got the picture.

Owl in the sunshine

A beautiful sunny day brought out the male Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery, who gave the camera a hard stare from the top of the old chestnut tree. His tremendous eyebrows keep his sensitive eyes from being dazzled.

The owl at the Ranger's Cottage must have been out somewhere, but I couldn't find it in the usual places.

A Song Thrush sang in a tree by the tennis courts at Alexandra Gate. The ugly racket made by the Iranian royalists can be heard in the background, but luckily the microphone is fairly directional and screens most of it out.

A Wren by the leaf yard came out on a twig for a moment.

The young male Chaffinch in the Flower Walk was calling from the new weeping beech tree that was planted to replace the famous old one mentioned by J.M. Barrie, which collapsed a couple of years ago.

The female Robin at Mount Gate ...

... and the male arrived on the railings one after the other. They were just beginning to have a flirtation and I was hoping to film him feeding her when a bunch of young oafs on electric hire bikes howled up the path, frightening them away and nearly knocking me over.

The cercis bush in the Rose Garden where the Blue Tits gather is taking a long time to blossom, but the buds are gradually enlarging.

The male Peregrine was on the tower by himself.

A Grey Heron moved around the little stream in the Dell looking for fish. This is a young bird from last year, still with a grey face rather than the black and white of a full adult.

A Great Crested Grebe on the Serpentine chased off a Herring Gull that was dogging them trying to snatch fish, and the pair had a little display to congratulate each other. It's the female who attacked the gull; both sexes behave in the same way.

The Black Swan chased away the proper mate of his hijacked girlfriend 4GIQ and returned to her triumpantly. She really ought not to be impressed with these antics, but one thing swans understand is power and she hangs around with him. However, she ignores the nest he has made in the nearby reeds.

The pair 4FYY and 4FUF were in undisputed possession of the nest site in the reeds east of the Lido. You can see the entrance behind them. The reeds are more trodden down, so they have certainly been in.

However, the boss swan on the Long Water is making a sad mess of things. He has the best nest site in the park on the artificial island near the Italian Garden, and he used it last year with his old mate to bring up their cygnets. But he was rummaging around making a nest on the shore in a dangerous place visited by foxes.

The Egyptian Geese with eight goslings were leading them up the Lido jetty so that they could feed on the grassy bank at the back.

The older brood of six at Fisherman's Keep was still intact, and so were the five at the Triangle, but I'm not sure about the family east of the Lido as they were sheltering under their mother.

The Mandarin pair were moving briskly up the edge at the island.

I'm not sure about this bee on a tulip leaf in the Rose Garden. Google Lens thinks it's an early Mining Bee, Andrena haemorrhoa, but it's by no means an exact match for the pictures of that species I could find.

However, this one is pretty surely a Yellow-Legged Mining Bee, A. flavipes.

The yellow wallflowers are beginning to fade, and a male Hairy-Footed Flower Bee, Anthophora plumipes, had transferred to a hyacinth.