Proper February weather

It was a thoroughly wet day with only a few pauses in the rain. A soggy Wood Pigeon ate flower buds in a myrobalan tree at the Triangle.

A Coal Tit in the Rose Garden was damp but eager to be fed.

A Blue Tit looked slightly dejected but came out too.

The Robin pair at Mount Gate were sheltering under their usual bush. This is the female.

Another Robin looked out from a dripping yew hedge in the Flower Walk.

The male Chaffinch had been keeping dry in a big yew. Their thick foliage gives the best shelter of any common tree.

The magnolia is beginning to come into flower, making a pretty background for  a Great Tit.

The pair of Long-Tailed Tits at the Vista were flitting about busily. I haven't yet seen one carrying nesting materials.

Jackdaws waited in a tree by the Italian Garden.

A Great Spotted Woodpecker called from a tree on Buck Hill.

The usual female Pied Wagtail hunting on the edge of the Serpentine ...

... was visited by her mate. They always keep some distance apart to avoid running into each other.

The dominant Black-Headed Gull at the landing stage was strutting about the rain-sodden planking.

The upper west Grey Heron nest on the island was busy with a pair adding twigs. One of them is young, hatched last year and still with a grey head.

A Great Crested Grebe wasn't worried by the downpour.

Neither was the Black Swan, who came over briskly for his daily treat of sunflower hearts.

The small camera that I use for video, which has been failing for some time, finally collapsed today. It's OK, I have a spare. Here to make up for the lack of videos are two from sunnier days.

A Blackbird looked for worms and insects on the edge of a bramble patch.

A Mallard drake showed off his iridescent head and secondaries as he preened on the edge of the Serpentine.

First glimpse of a heron chick

There were encouraging signs of the approach of spring everywhere. A Blue Tit ...

... and a Great Tit perched in cherry blossom in the Rose Garden ...

... while the male Chaffinch waited on the trunk.

A Coal Tit perched in a rose bush with the leaves just beginning to come out.

A pair of Long-Tailed Tits in a tree at the Vista should soon be nesting in the brambles below. A pair on the other side of the lake have already been seen collecting nesting material. It takes some time to build their complex spherical nests.

The third Robin at Mount Gate was in a forsythia bush whose buds are about to burst into yellow blossom.

The Robin from the southwest corner of the bridge followed me to the Vista. It hasn't learnt yet that it can collect all the pine nuts it wants in one visit, so it flies out again and again.

The Jackdaws were on the ruined Parade Ground looking for worms in the mud. One perched in a tree at the edge.

A Great Spotted Woodpecker climbed on the dead top of an old chestnut tree by the leaf yard. You can see that it's female because it doesn't have a red patch on the back of its head.

The female Pied Wagtail on the Serpentine found a small larva, its second in the minute when I was photographing it. It's catching enough to keep it going, but has to work hard when there are few flying insects.

The dominant Black-Headed Gull Blue 2331, on its usual post, had a dull green background of a weeping willow just beginning to put out leaves. They are the first of the trees to go into leaf in spring.

A pair of Black-Headed Gulls were displaying on the edge of the Serpentine. They haven't yet got the dark heads of their breeding plumage and it will be a while before they are off to their breeding ground, which may be as far away as Russia or as near as the Pitsea rubbish dump in Basildon.

This isn't a good video, but I'm putting it up because it shows the first indistinct glimpse of a Grey Heron chick in the top nest on the island. It's bouncing around below and to the left of its parent, and you can just hear the sound of it clacking its beak through the wind noise.

A pair added twigs to a nest in the middle of the island. There are already several big old nests here they could reuse with only small additions, but it seems that they want a place of their own.

Below it a Cormorant perched in an ash.

One of the Great Crested Grebes from the bridge was fishing at the Triangle.

Seeing its mate in the middle of the lake, it hurried over and they had a ceremonial greeting. There's a good nest site under an oak on the Long Water side of the bridge, but let's hope they don't use it till the summer when there are enough small fish to feed the chicks.

A pair of Egyptian Geese preened on a fallen tree at Peter Pan.

A Mistle Thrush at last

Mistle Thrushes have been very rare over the past year, so it was good to find one singing in a tree on Buck Hill. It isn't a very interesting song, like a Blackbird with no imagination.

Greenfinches twittered and sang their wheezing song in a tree farther along the path. There were Starlings chattering below, and at the end of the clip one of them did a good imitation of a Greenfinch.

A Starling perched on the railings by the Vista. You can tell he's a male by the blue tinge at the base of his beak, Females have pink here.

It was a milder day and the small birds weren't nearly as hungry as yesterday. But a good number of Blue Tits appeared in the Rose Garden ...

... and a Coal Tit wasn't worried by the ferocious thorns of a Russian Olive, Elaeagnus angustifolia.

A Coal Tit in the corkscrew hazel in the Flower Walk had caught a small spider.

As well as the familiar female Chaffinch ...

... there was a young male. This is probably the one that used to accompany the old male, whose mate was the female above. It may be the pair's son.

A pair of Long-Tailed Tits were flitting around the bushes near the clump of alders southeast of the Italian Garden. Probably they're about to nest in the brambles here.

There are three Robins at Mount Gate. This one is the slightly dishevelled female ...

... and this is her mate, who came out of the bushes with her to take pine nuts off the ground.

This one comes to my hand, and the others don't. Earlier I mistook it for the male of the pair, since it's never far away from their bush.

A Grey Heron stood on a lamp post at the bridge.

One of the pair in the nest at the west end of the island was on a wire basket below, collecting a twig ...

... and delivering it to its mate in the nest.

Pigeon Eater was away hunting. His mate had a wash and flew up to the Dell restaurant roof to dry and preen.

Coots are building a nest on a chain at the east end of the island.

The boss Mute Swan and his mate were under the Italian Garden waterspouts with a couple of Cormorants.

 

Panic in the Rose Garden

A colder day with a keen east wind makes the small birds hungrier, and Great Tits, Blue Tits and Coal Tits in the Flower Walk were keen to take pine nuts from my hand.

The familiar Robin at the southwest corner of the bridge ...

... and one of the Coal Tit pair hurried up the top of the steps before I reached their usual feeding place.

The female Robin at Mount Gate still has to be called before she comes out on the railings. It's a ritual now, and she's accustomed to it.

A pair of Long-Tailed Tits bounced about in a tree by the Vista. They're seen in pairs and no longer in winter flocks as the nesting season approaches.

I was photographing a Blue Tit in the Rose Garden ...

... when suddenly the small birds dispersed in all directions in an explosion of panic. They had seen a Sparrowhawk, which swooped down at their bush. Luckily it didn't get any of them. It flew up and perched in a plane tree.

This is a young bird, as you can tell from the coarse barring on its front. I couldn't find where the usual pair at the police station nested last year, as the old Magpie nest they used to use had fallen to piece. But it's clear that they did nest.

The scattered feathers of a Feral Pigeon at the Triangle showed where a Sparrowhawk had struck earlier.

A Magpie perched on a stump by the Long Water, with gorse blossom in the background.

A Jay looked expectant in a tree farther along the path.

Jackdaws lined the Serpentine Road.

You can never tell whether gulls are courting or about to shoo a rival. Three young Herring Gulls seemed to be a pair ousting a third, and sitting down is a sign of assent, but then they too chased each other.

The single Great Crested Grebe at the island refuses to be budged by the pair. After they shoo it, it simply returns to its usual place.

Coots are rebuilding the nest south of Peter Pan, usually a successful site.

A Coot made itself comfortable on the swan nesting basket at the Triangle. Geese, ducks and herons have used this basket but I've never seen a Mute Swan interested in it.

Miniature daffodils in the Rose Garden are barely larger than buttercups.

I thought this growth on a fallen tree trunk near the Henry Moore sculpture might be a Chicken of the Woods that had been partly eaten by a squirrel, but it isn't the season. Google Lens says it's a Dog Vomit Slime Mould, Fuligo septica, and indeed there is an unmistakable patch of that on a log a short way off, but it's a different strain, bright yellow and hugging the surface.

The official mind at work: how to get the word 'issue' three times into a 38-word notice.