Chicks and parents

Young Great Tits in the bushes by the bridge clamoured for their parents to feed them.

A young Long-Tailed Tit at Mount Gate was looking dapper and fluffy ...

... but a parent was frazzled by the strain of nesting and feeding the chicks.

A Reed Warbler near the Italian Garden was catching insects for its young.

Ahmet Amerikali found a Whitethroat near the Buck Hill shelter. It's probably the same bird that I photographed yesterday a few yards away.

A Jay stared grandly from a stump in the Flower Walk.

A large party of Swifts was hunting over the Serpentine, sometimes coming down to catch low-flying midges.

This is the male Pied Wagtail who had a sore foot several months ago. He is now fit again though a small blister remains on his right foot. He was running around the Serpentine Road, sure that he could avoid oncoming dangers thanks to his rocket-like takeoff.

The three Grey Heron chicks looked out from the nest at the east end of the island.

I also heard the clacking of heron chicks from the middle of the island, but the nest was impossible to see from any angle. This would be the fifth nest this year, and there's still time for more.

In the water below, the Great Crested Grebes who lost their eggs halfway along the island were wanting to take the nest back from a pair of Coots that had occupied it. They had no difficulty in removing the Coots, but this could go either way as the stubbornness of the Coots may defeat the agility and sharp beaks of the grebes.

Duncan Campbell shot this close-up view of a brand new Coot chick in a fountain pool in the Italian Garden yesterday.

 When I went back to check today I could only find one more chick, but it's still possible that others are on the way.

A Coot has built a nest in an absolutely idiotic place, on one of the electric pedalos. Quite apart from the fact that the boat will be brought into use, they don't realise that if they make a nest above the water level the chicks won't be able to get back in. Even the other adult is finding it hard to get up.

The Black Swan had finally realised that the remaining eggs on the nest are not going to hatch, and got off to be with his Mute mate and the single cygnet. It may not be much of a result but he was clearly proud of it.

Ahmet Amerikali photographed the mother 4GIQ carrying the cygnet.

The Mute Swan with five cygnets went along the edge of the Dell restaurant terrace, hoping to find someone at at table who would throw them a titbit. It was a grey drizzly day so she was out of luck. She chased off a Grey Heron which might have been thinking of snatching one of her cygnets.

The Common Pochard on the Long Water still had one surviving duckling.

There were two Red-Crested Pochard drakes. Their arrivals and departures are comppletely unpredictable.

The Whitethroat reappears

A male Whitethroat perched in a winged elm tree beside the Long Water. It was exactly where I had seen one a few days ago and almost certainly the same bird.

The Song Thrush often heard at the southeast corner of the leaf yard was in an elder tree beside the path.

This male Blackbird at Magazine Gate is also a familiar sight in his favourite holly tree.

A Wren stared from the red-leafed cherry tree a short way down the slope ...

... and there was another beside the path at the back of the Lido.

The male Robin at Mount Gate came out for pine nuts.

A young Great Tit in the Rose Garden looked neat and fresh, in contrast to the parents who have become tatty from the strain of looking after them.

Swifts whizzed and screamed over a weeping willow tree beside the Serpentine.

A male Pied Wagtail by the Dell restaurant found a small black larva.

Two Jays regularly appear for peanuts: one in a poplar south of the Vista ...

... and another near the Albert Memorial.

A Carrion Crow looked expectant on a stump beside the Serpentine Road. 

The male Little Owl was in his usual lime tree. It seems odd that although there are a male and a female owl here they never seem to call to each other.

A Grey Heron blended into the fallen poplar at Peter Pan.

The Black Swan took time off from his futile vigil on the eggs to have a frantic wash on the Serpentine.

His single cygnet was eating algae at the edge, watched over by his Mute mother 4GIQ.

It's the high season for Buff-Tailed Bumblebees, which outnumber even the Honeybees in the Rose Garden. A patch of Penstemon was full of them ...

.. and they also enjoy the peculiar flowers of the Bottlebrush Plant, Callistemon citrinus, an Australian species.

Another Grey Wagtail family?

A young Robin came out on the railings at the northwest corner of the bridge. It's only the second one I've seen this year.

The bushes everywhere were loud with young Great Tits demanding food from their long-suffering parents. One did come to my hand for the first time today, showing that they will be independent soon.

The newly confident Coal Tit followed me from the Serpentine Gallery to the bridge.  Once they have dared to take food from your hand they become quite peristent.

The Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery was back in his usual lime tree. It was surprising to find him here, as it was drizzling and owls hate being rained on.

There are Wrens all along the shrubbery at the east side of the Long Water and at the Triangle just the other side of the bridge. There are also plenty of Magpies which the Wrens furiously scold, and seem to live in a perpetual state of fury.

A Magpie waited for to collect a peanut from the railings.

Most of the Jays have picked up the trick of grabbing a peanut from someone's hand in flight. It's a more reliable way of getting food than waiting for it to be put down where it might be grabbed by some other bird.

A Song Thrush sang in a holly tree a few yards north of Peter Pan. This tree is a gathering place for all kinds of birds thanks to the protection of its spiky evergreen leaves, but it's also a very hard place to get a photograph as there are few clear spaces.

It looks as if there are two families of Grey Wagtails in the park. We've seen plenty of the ones from the nest at the Triangle, and the two chicks have grown up and are independent. But today there was a female adult on the lawn in the Dell collecting insects. So there must be a second nest, probably beside the waterfall where there have been nests before.

A Moorhen clambered over the rocks beside the small waterfall.

The fountain heads in the Italian Garden have a small space underneath, and Coots often try to make nests here. There's nothing inside that a nest could be anchored to so the attempt always fails, but that doesn't stop these stubborn birds from trying.

There are so many Coot nests around the Long Water that it's impossible to keep track of the various families. A chick stood on a nest opposite Peter Pan.

The Black Swan is still sitting on the eggs on the nesting raft, a vain endeavour.

His mate the Mute 4GIQ has realised that it's useless expecting any more eggs to hatch, and is devoting herself to looking after the single hybrid cygnet.

The park is crowded with Canada and Greylag Geese that have come in to moult their flight feathers, and there was a flock on the Long Water. In previous years the boss Mute Swan would have chased them back on to the Serpentine, but now he's gone there is no opposition to them. The swan pair 4HDW and 4DTT seem to have abandoned their attempt to nest on the gravel strip.

The Egyptian Geese who originally had eleven goslings near the small bothouses are now down to seven. They were feeding by the horse ride.

Sad to say, the Pochard on the Long Water has only one duckling left. I don't think they have ever bred successfully in the park in recent years.

Cygnet calls

The hybrid cygnet was following its mother 4GIQ on the Serpentine while the father turned over the remaining eggs -- though it seems most unlikely now that any of these will hatch. Note at 7 seconds the call the cygnet makes, a small version of its father's hoot and quite different from the peeping of a Mute cygnet.

I'm putting up this video of the Mute Swans on the Serpentine with five cygnets to show the high-pitched peeping sound the cygnets make, quite different from the hoot of the hybrid cygnet at the other end of the lake.

Jenna photographed both parents on the nest raft this morning inspecting the eggs in a worried way. The Black Swan insists on sitting on them for a while in the inceasingly vain hope that they will hatch.

Another picture from this morning taken by Jorgen: the original mate of 4GIQ came over to look at the cygnet. He didn't seem to be jealous or hostile.

The three Canada goslings were preening at the Vista, showing their developing flight feathers emerging in their blue wrappings.

David Lacey took this picture of the silliest nest of the year, made by a Moorhen in a pedalo. Even the Coots don't behave as foolishly as this.

The three latest Grey Heron chicks could be seen together in the nest at the east end of the island.

One of the young herons from last year walked carefully along a fallen tree at Peter Pan.

An interesting picture sent by Theodore: a young Jay. Although Jays must be breeding in the park I've never seen one younger than an independent teenager, or for that matter a young Jackdaw. But young Carrion Crows and Magpies are often seen.

A teenage Magpie at Mount Gate was already expecting to be given a peanut, which it successfully opened.

The male Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery was in the chestnut tree.

This male Blackbird is often seen in a holly tree by Magazine Gate.

A young Great Tit looked out from a tree by the Buck Hill shelter. They're still depending on their parents for food.

We haven't been seeing so much of the Robins at Mount Gate, but today the female came out on the fence to take some pine nuts.

The herbaceous borders in the Rose Garen are empty now while the summer plantings are being organised, so there are fewer insects than usual. A patch of salvia among the roses attracted Buff-Tailed Bumblebees.

The area between the Dell and the Rose Garden has a lot of exotic trees including several monkeypuzzles. The largest one has put out an impressive array of cones. It's a male tree and these are pollen cones.

There is also this unusual little tree, a Yew Plum Pine, Podophyllus macrocarpus, native to Japan and eastern China. This is no more than a sapling, and it can grow to 60 feet tall.

It has this peculiar name because its little cones develop into purplish-red fruits that are eaten by birds. It's worth keeping an eye on it to see what happens.