One owl is enough

The male Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery looked down severely from the chestnut tree.

A Green Woodpecker probed for insects under a tree nearby ...

... and a Jay was expecting a peanut.

Jackdaws can turn up anywhere.

A Starling at the Lido restaurant had won a bit of pizza crust, which it took away to eat in private without the others trying to grab it.

I was trying to photograph a Chiffchaff when it launched itself into the air.

Blue Tits ...

... and Great Tits perched in cherry blossom in the Rose Garden.

A Long-Tailed Tit hunted in the bushes near Mount Gate ...

... where all three Robins were singing. This is the unattached one in the dogwood bush.

Two sets of two Grey Heron chicks on adjacent nests on the island set each other clattering.

Pigeon Eater's mate stepped in for her share of the latest kill as he went off to wash the blood from his face. He is very particular about his appearance.

A male Mute Swan was occupying the nest site at the edge of the Lido restaurant terrace. Nick the Wildlife Officer had put down some straw here. It isn't a good place, far too exposed, and has never succeeded. There's a floating nest basket nearby which the swans are completely ignoring.

The Black Swan and 4GIQ were under the small willow at the Triangle.

One pair of Egyptian Geese was along the road towards the boathouses, still with seven goslings ...

... and the other was at Fisherman's Keep, also still with seven.

On the gravel strip in the Long Water you could see Shoveller and Pochard drakes, a pair of Mallards, a Gadwall drake, and a female Tufted Duck out of focus in the foreground.

There were no exotic bees on the paperbushes in the Dell, but plenty of male Hairy-Footed Flower Bees. These greatly outnumber females.

Two by two

Grey Heron chicks have a way of appearing unexpectedly. I had no idea there were any in this nest in the middle of the island until they started making a racket while I was filming the other two young herons just a few yards away, which were quietly preening on top of their nest.

Here are the first two Grey Heron chicks preening on top of their nest. They are getting more adventurous and climbing around, though not yet quite ready to leave the nest. It was the loud shrieks heard while I was filming this that brought the younger two chicks to my notice.

Both the broods of seven Egyptian goslings were still intact, the older ones at Fisherman's Keep ...

... and the younger ones on the other side by the boathouses.

Two Little Owls were on view, both male. This is the one at the Serpentine Gallery ...

... and here is the one at the Ranger's Cottage.

There were also two groups of Starlings enjoying a furious bath at the Lido restaurant and in a swampy patch in Kensington Gardens.

And there were two kinds of bee together in the paperbushes in the Dell. A European Orchard Bee, Osmia cornuta, being buzzed by a male Hairy-Footed Flower Bee. I'd never even heard of the former, but it was kindly identified in the comments.

There is a patch of spurge around the bushes, where a hoverfly was feeding on the odd green flowers. It is Eupeodes luniger, and better known by that name than its cumbersome English handle Common Spotted Field Syrph. The people who name insects are not noted for conciseness. Crescent Moon Fly would have been much neater.

Two fine pictures by Tom from two days ago: a pair of Great Crested Grebes dancing by the Lido restaurant ...

... and the Cetti's Warbler at the Vista in flight.

There are two kinds of wattle at the north gate of the Rose Garden, both used by Blue Tits waiting to fly down for pine nuts. This is a Cootamundra Wattle ...

... and this is a Wedge-Leaf Wattle.

Inside the garden, a Carrion Crow was trying its best to look sweet in pink cherry blossom.

Ahmet Amerikali was at the northwest corner of the bridge and found a Long-Tailed Tit carrying a feather, showing that they have reached the stage of adding the lining to their large and complex nest, which takes weeks to build.

I didn't see them when I passed the spot, but a Coal Tit I hadn't seen before was singing in a treetop.

A Chiffchaff sang near the Queen's Temple.

This disgraceful signpost at Temple Gate has been sending visitors in wrong directions for years. Every single finger on it is grossly out in various ways. You can see the Diana fountain over the road in this shot, with the signpost pointing directly away from it.

More little Egyptians

There is another brood of Egyptian Geese on the Serpentine. The female was sheltering her new goslings on the netting over the new reed beds at the Triangle. You can see four here but probably there are more. Update: Jenna counted seven, and says that the parents are those of the only Egyptian gosling to survive on the Serpentine last year.

Her mate rested on the Mute Swan nesting basket a few feet away, not disturbed by a swan since they aren't interested in the basket which is far too exposed for their liking.

The Egyptian mother on the other side of the lake hurried her seven goslings down to the water as a loose dog approached.

A Great Crested Grebe had caught a perch at the Lido. This fish has to be turned round to swallow it head first because of its spiny dorsal fin, but the grebe couldn't do this at once because Black-Headed Gulls were hovering around waiting to grab the fish. The grebe carried the fish low in the water to avoid it being snatched until the gulls gave up and went away.

When the irises were planted in the Italian Garden fountains they were surrounded by a cage of steel tubes with plastic netting to protect them from being torn up by the Coots. The cages were rather ugly but they did the job. Later, the park management very foolishly decided to remove them. The Coots at once went to work ripping out the iris corms and scattering them all over the pools. Now that they are nesting they are further destroying the iris clumps by carrying off the corms as nesting material. In a few months there won't be any irises in the pools at all.

One of the young Grey Herons had jumped out of the nest into the adjacent one. It has done this before and got back successfully. It probably can't fly properly yet, but it can manage a wing-assisted leap of a few feet.

The male Peregrine was on the tower by himself.

Wood Pigeons at Mount Gate were eating leaf buds, which are full of sweet sap.

The male Robin came out on the path below to demand pine nuts.

The unattached Robin was waiting in the forsythia bush.

So was a Blue Tit.

Another Blue Tit in the Rose Garden was in dogwood blossom. They chew blossom to squeeze out nectar.

A Long-Tailed Tit was in the same tree with a different purpose, to collect lichen for a nest.

One of the pair of Coal Tits at Temple Gate flew out to a hawthorn tree to meet me. It's hard to feed these two as they are too shy to come to my hand, and they can't pick out pine nuts from the long grass under the tree. I did manage to feed it when I got to the path ...

... where the other Coal Tit had just caught a midge.

A Wren sang in a bush in the Flower Walk.

I got a report about the ring on the Cetti's Warbler seen yesterday. It was ringed by Bill Haines, not here but at the Barnes Wetland centre, on 11 June last year. It's male and was a full adult when ringed.

Bees were visiting the paperbushes in the Dell, not just a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee ...

... but also a male Hairy-Footed Flower Bee. Males are ginger, females black.

Cetti's Warbler at the Vista

On a beautiful sunny day a Cetti's Warbler was surprisingly visible in the bushes by the Vista. Not only that, but it had a ring and it was possible to read it: BEF2112. I've reported it, and it may be interesting to see where it came from. No one is ringing small birds here in the park.

There was a Green Woodpecker in the tree above ...

... and a Great Spotted Woodpecker in a tree across the path by the leaf yard. It was very high up and I didn't get much of a shot, but Ahmet Amerikali found it lower down and got a good picture. It's a female, without the male's red patch on the back of the neck.

A pair of Rose-Ringed Parakeets were mating in a nearby tree. The male was unexpectedly enthusiastic.

Near Peter Pan, several Greenfinches could be seen in a tree. This is a male ...

... and here is a female.

A Long-Tailed Tit was collecting lichen for its nest in the top of the same tree.

A Magpie looked smart in a nearby cherry tree ...

... and a small group of Jackdaws arrived to ask for pine nuts.

A Blue Tit perched in new leaves in the Rose Garden.

The Coal Tits weren't showing well anywhere, but I got a murky shot of one deep in the bushes at the southwest corner of the bridge.

There was a Goldcrest in a yew tree above.

Starlings chattered on the umbrellas at the Lido restaurant.

The male Little Owl was calling by the Ranger's Cottage.

Katja reported another Little Owl near the Speke obelisk. We used to have a pair here until 2022, when the old chestnut tree they nested in was killed by the drought and they left. This may be one of those, or a descendant.

The young Grey Herons in the top nest on the island were climbing around restlessly.

A Cormorant at Peter Pan forced another off a post, just to assert dominance. It could easily have chosen the next post which was empty.

A pair of Great Crested Grebes mated on a nest they have built on the edge of the reed bed by the Serpentine outflow.

Ahmet Amerikali found a Little Grebe on the Serpentine, a surprising place as the wide open expanse of water doesn't suit their habits.

The Egyptian Geese still have seven goslings.