Friday, 14 February 2025

A sight of the Little Owl

The morning was cold but the afternoon sunshine was warm enough to bring the Little Owl at the Round Pond out of her hole.


The male Peregrine perched on the barracks for a few minutes before flying off northwest in the direction of Trellick Tower. He is distinguishable by the grubby grey colour of the pale strip behind his eye. I haven't seen the new female for some time and am beginning to wonder if she has dumped him. Female Peregrines are dominant and fickle.


Greenfinches aren't great singers, but this one in a treetop by the Long Water was doing its best.


The Robin in the leaf yard is now paired up, though the mates aren't taking much notice of each other yet.


This is the one I know well and comes to my hand.


A Jackdaw waited on a branch above.


Kites in the shape of birds of prey are flying over the new grass on the Parade Ground in an effort to stop the Carrion Crows from tearing up the turf to find worms. The crows are not impressed.


Half a dozen Blue Tits are now coming for food in the Rose Garden. Word seems to be getting around.


One of the Coal Tit pair perched for a moment on a teasel.



There was another Coal Tit in corkscrew hazel bush in the Dell, which came to take pine nuts from the railings.


The male Chaffinch ...


... and his mate picked me up at the Round Pond and followed me to the Flower Walk.


One of the Grey Heron chicks in the upper nest on the island could be seen indistinctly from the land side.


You can see all three from across the lake, but at a considerable distance.


Seven Common Gulls were together at the Lido.


Moorhens have a very varied diet -- in fact they will eat almost anything. Algae from the edge of the lake go down well, and there are insects and larvae to be found under dead leaves.


The Moorhens in the Dell stream headbutted each other ...


... before one chased the other off the water and up the lawn. I think this is flirtation rather than aggression, but with some birds it's hard to distinguish the two.

Thursday, 13 February 2025

Fidgety young herons

The young Grey Herons in the nest on the island never stop fidgeting. Soon they will start climbing around in the tree, a perilous game as they can't fly yet, but they never seem to fall out.


No wonder their parents are keeping at a distance.


The killer Mute Swan's mate flapped aggressively at a heron on the gravel strip in the Long Water. It took no notice.


It was reported that the pair of Egyptian Geese on the roundabout at Marble Arch had hatched eight or nine goslings, but by the time I got there only one was left.


Jenna said she had seen a lot of herons there shortly before, so we have a fair idea of what happened to the poor little creatures. This is in fact the second Egyptian brood in the park: one that appeared a few days ago vanished almost immediately.

But dogged persistence wins in the end and the number of Egyptians in the park is steadily increasing. There were at least a hundred scattered around the north end of the Parade Ground where the Wasteland didn't reach.


This area of bare earth has now been covered with turf, but that hasn't budged the Fieldfare from its place under the trees. The new turf must come with worms already in it so it remains a suitable feeding place.


The bird didn't mind a passing squirrel, but something else caused it to fly up to a branch.


Pigeon Eater may not take Moorhens, but this one was scared of him and scuttled off as he strolled up.


A Wren climbed nimbly down the railings at the Triangle.


The familiar Hyde Park male Chaffinch saw me from a long way off and flew into the Dell to be fed.


The wattle bushes in the Rose Garden were full of waiting Great Tits ...


... and one of the Coal Tits, which saw a gap in the constant traffic of larger birds and managed to take a pine nut from my hand.


Its mate was on the other side of the garden checking a branch for larvae.


One of the Coal Tits at Mount Gate also came out.


The Robin at the southwest corner of the bridge is now a regular customer ...


... but this one in the Flower Walk remains shy and was shifting around nervously on a twig. It did eventually fly down to collect a pine nut from the ground.


I passed the new Bulgarian church on my way home and the door was open. The interior is nearing completion. Of course the vaults are dummies, but they will look rather fine. It's a most unexpected thing to see in a small London mews house.

Wednesday, 12 February 2025

Fighting Moorhens

Moorhens are less belligerent than Coots but they do fight, and in the same way. It's a slight surprise to see the weaker one diving to get out of the way, as they seldom dive in other circumstances. An inconclusive encounter led to them mooning each other with the white feathers on their behind, a standard Moorhen gesture of defiance.


A more peaceful scene: the pair at the Vista were in the bush where they will probably nest later.


Another preened in the reed bed under the Italian Garden.


Two Cormorants were fishing nearby, though not catching anything while I was there. They never all leave, even when they have fished out the lake well beyond the point of diminishing returns.


When they had given up and gone away to try somewhere else, a Great Crested Grebe tried with an equal lack of success. This is a female, evidently the mate of the male who is often seen here.


A Grey Heron was also fishing from the Mute SWans' nesting island, which the killer swan and his mate have still not claimed. But as the boss pair of the lake, they can start at their leisure.


The number two swans at the Serpentine island are making a strong claim for their territory, and were chasing another pair away.


The three young Grey Herons were fidgeting in their nest, with the parents perched at a distance for the sake of a quiet life.


It's quite hard to tell a young Herring Gull, in the foreground here, from a young Lesser Black-Backed Gull. The latter is slightly smaller and darker and more delicate. But the only way to be sure is to wait till they fly. Lesser Black-Backs have dark flight feathers all the way along their wing, Herring Gulls have a paler patch in their inner primaries.


A Pied Wagtail used the buoys at the Lido as a hunting station. There are midges over the lake at all times of year. We aren't seeing as many wagtails as we used to. The annual destruction caused by the Winter Wasteland has broken up the colony which used to run all over the Parade Ground.


A pair of Long-Tailed Tits hunted through the trees at the edge of the leaf yard ...


... where the usual Robin came out for some pine nuts.


So did the Robin who lives in the yew hedge in the Flower Walk ...


... and the female Chaffinch was waiting in the corkscrew hazel bush.


The male Chaffinch in the Rose Garden appeared in a flower bed ...


... and one of the Coal Tits was flitting around restlessly in a tree. They seldom stay in the same place for five seconds, which makes them hard to photograph.

Tuesday, 11 February 2025

St John of Rila

Although the atrocious weather has improved slightly there are still lots of hungry small birds in the Rose Garden, all the hungrier since the destruction of the shrubbery that was home for at least 50 of them. Most of them are Great Tits, but there are also Blue Tits and a pair of tiny Coal Tits, one of which appears just before the end of the video. The Robins and Chaffinches were also around but don't appear here.


The Blue Tit with odd head feathers was the first one here to come to my hand, several months ago while the shrubbery was still intact.


A Great Tit perched among the odd flowers of a paperbush in the Dell.


A Long-Tailed Tit hung upside down from a twig near the Buck Hill shelter ...


... and a Robin was waiting on a bramble for its daily pine nuts.


Another in the Flower Walk was made nervous by a rival singing nearby, and fled when it landed in the bush behind him.


On the other side of the path a Coal Tit ...


... and a Blue Tit perched in the twisted twigs of the corkscrew hazel.


A pair of Magpies keeping a lookout from the weathervane at the Lido restaurant ...



... swooped down to demand peanuts. One landed on a giant flowerpot full of cyclamens.


The two Grey Heron chicks in the east nest are fairly quiet except at feeding time, and rest out of sight in the bottom of the nest ...


... unlike the three older ones in the upper nest which were pictured in yesterday's blog, which are constantly milling about so that their parents have to stand in other places.

Pigeon Eater stared at a Moorhen. I've never seen him try to catch one, although it would be no harder than taking a pigeon. Perhaps they taste nasty.


I wondered whether there was a female Great Crested Grebe on the lake, since males are usually seen alone at the moment. Yes, there is, and the pair were displaying by the bridge.


A pair of Egyptian Geese were kicking up a racket on the tall dead tree next to the Serpentine Gallery.


When you see a Mute Swan in one of the Italian Garden pools, it's generally there because it was chased off the Long Water by the killer swan. They have to wait till he moves under the bridge before they can return. Fortunately there are lots of algae for them to eat.


The Bulgarian Embassy is just down the road from the park. For some years there has been a little Bulgarian Orthodox church in a mews house at the back, converted from its original use as a stable. Now it's being done up in style, and today a gilt cross and a mosaic of its patron St John of Rila were being installed on the wall.


Apart from that the outside of the building remains unchanged, but inside the two floors have been joined together and an internal dome with a circular gallery made of the upper level. This is not complete enough to photograph yet, but I'll try later. I have a soft spot for St John of Rila, a 10th century hermit who used to feed birds on his hand.