The climbing fox

The Little Owl at the Round Pond was ready for her close-up.

A Robin near the Henry Moore sculpture ticked irritably at something.

This one in the Rose Garden is now coming out quite confidently to pick up thrown pine nuts.

Two Starlings preened at the Lido restaurant while waiting to raid a table.

A young Herring Gull struggled to peck at a bread roll so stale and hard that even its mighty beak could make little impression on it. It gave up and flew away.

The Czech Black-Headed Gull was away from its usual post at Fisherman's Keep and its place had been taken by another, also wearing one of Bill Haines's rings.

Two of the young Grey Herons explored the island.

An adult was reflected in the stream in the Dell.

When you zoom out you can see why people think the herons are plastic garden ornaments.

The Dell is a very carefully planned completely artificial landscape. The hill at the back is the downstream side of the big earth dam that holds the Serpentine in its flooded river valley. The little stream is quite a long way east of the original course of the Westbourne river. The top level of the main waterfall which looks as if it was draining the lake is actually higher than the lake and is worked by recirculating the water from the bottom of the stream through an electric pump, which also keeps the water in the stream moving faster so it doesn't get stagnant. The real outflow of the lake is at the second level of the waterfall. The natural-looking rocks are chunks brought in and artfully arranged. So it's all fake, but a very handsome fake.

A Great Crested Grebe chick on the Long Water accompanied its father up to the edge of the Italian Garden. It's now fully grown but still dependent.

It was being fed when a Black-Headed Gull swooped down and tried to grab the fish.

The teenagers on the Serpentine are now quite able to fish for themselves.

A Coot had a brisk wash and flap.

A Shoveller drake fed in the blue reflection of a pedalo.

Andrea the Dell gardener pointed out a remarkable thing. One of the foxes has taken to resting on a branch of a weeping willow a good 10 feet above the ground. It gets there by walking up the drooping branch from the far end. The trailing leaves make it impossible to get a clear view of it but this shot at least shows it peacefully dozing.

Buff-Tailed Bumblebees are still visiting the arbutus in the Rose Garden shrubbery.

Peter Pan blew his curious instrument, a sort of aulos, above the debris of yesterday's wake for Liam Payne.

Red leaves on a grey day

A Burning Bush, Euonymus alatus, on the outside edge of the Flower Walk made a spectacular background for a Blue Tit ...

... and a Great Tit.

The familiar Great Tit in the Rose Garden followed me around and collected several pine nuts.

It was a dark drizzly day with a blustery wind and the Little Owl at the Round Pond had retreated to her hole.

Pigeon Eater had already eaten most of his latest victim, but felt that he could just manage a little more and came back for a second helping.

One of the three youngest Grey Herons fished on the small waterfall in the Dell, hoping to get a small fish as it was washed over the edge. It did seem to get something at 15 seconds, but mostly there was nothing but dead leaves.

One of the others had returned to the nest. They tend to do this when it's raining, perhaps because it comforts them in the unexpectedly miserable conditions of their first autumn.

Cormorants clustered on the posts by the bridge.

A Moorhen paddled through floating leaves.

A pair of Mute Swans east of the Lido preened while a slightly older heron fished on the edge of the reed bed.

The wind encouraged flying, and Greylag Geese circled the lake ...

... and splashed down among some Coots, which didn't seem bothered.

Some more fungi from Mario's very educative tour yesterday. This is Laughing Jim, so called because it's hallucinogenic. Its more ordinary name is Spectacular Rustgill, Gymnopilus junonius.

The little buttons at the left edge of the picture are Sulphur Tuft, Hypholoma fasciculare, and here are some more on the other side of the trunk.

Oyster mushrooms, Pleurotus ostreatus, have a tendency to disappear promptly because they're edible and good, and expensive to buy.

Two more I photographed today: Stubble Rosegill, Volvariella gloiocephala, in the Rose Garden but also quite common in other parts of the park.

Judas Ear, Auricularia auricula-Judae, is a gelatinous fungus, edible but tasteless. It's so named because it often grows on elder trees and there is a legend that Judas hanged himself on an elder. Several of this genus are popular foods in China where their peculiar texture is appreciated.

A crowd of several hundred people gathered at Peter Pan for a kind of wake for the singer Liam Payne, who fell out of a window a few days ago. The statue was plastered with photographs, flowers and balloons. I don't know why they chose this place, perhaps something to do with a boy who never grew up.

Little Grebe again

A busy sunny Saturday isn't a good time for seeing birds, but there was one surprise: a Little Grebe on the Long Water. This is probably the one that was on the Round Pond, left behind when its three companions flew away, which has found a more congenial place with plenty of cover.

Long-Tailed Tits flitted about in a dead tree beside the Long Water. There are just as many insects for them in a dead tree as in a live one.

The Grey Wagtail was on the Dell waterfall again, its already surprisingly good camouflage made better by yellow floating leaves.

The Little Owl at the Round Pond was in her usual horse chestnut tree, where she could only be photographed from almost directly below. This is tricky to do with a large and heavy telephoto lens without falling over backwards.

The male Chaffinch in the Rose Garden shrubbery came out for some pine nuts.

The young Grey Herons were flying around the island. One landed on a moored rowing boat.

The obstinate Coot at Peter Pan was back on its nest under the cynical gaze of a Black-Headed Gull.

A Shoveller drake revolved and dipped, collecting small water creatures to filter out with the bristles inside its bill. It's the same system as used by Blue Whales, on a much smaller scale.

A Honeybee drone on the bird identification sign at Peter Pan refused to be classified as a bird or a queen.

The black walnut trees by the Dell have turned a vivid yellow.

The ancient fire engine from Imperial College, a 1916 Dennis, is still working well after 128 years.

I met Mario, who was looking for fungi. He showed me some unusual species, of which the most remarkable was the tiny orange Ping Pong Bat fungus Favolaschia claudopus, growing on a fallen beech branch.  Originally from Madagascar, it arrived in Britain in 2012. No one knows how.

This may be an Upright Coral Fungus, Ramaria stricta, but there are several similar species.

Smoky Bracket, Bjerkandera adusta ...

... and a clump of Shaggy Scalycap, Pholiota squarrosa.

This is one I found earlier. Mario tentatively identified it from the picture as a Common Cavalier mushroom, Melanoleuca polioleuca.

You get a bird with this one: a Magpie sits on a log covered with Turkey Tail fungus, Trametes versicolor.

Song Thrush in a yew

Autumn colours are appearing  around the Long Water. There's never much of a show in the mild English climate, unlike in New England where poor soil and freezing nights push the trees into frenzies of red and yellow.

A Song Thrush was feeding on the fruit in a yew tree near Peter Pan.

A Rose-Ringed Parakeet in the same tree tree chewed the red aril of a yew fruit to extract a few drops of juice, then spat it out and grabbed another. This typically wasteful way of feeding is of no use to the tree, which relies on a bird to eat the whole thing and pass out the undigested hard seed in its droppings at a distance where it can germinate usefully.

A Starling at the Lido restaurant had seized a chip, their favourite snack except perhaps for chocolate cake.

The faithful Chaffinch was waiting at the gate of the Flower Walk for his daily treat of pine nuts.

Inside the Flower Walk, the Robin on the north side ...

... and the one on the south side were glaring and nattering at each other and had a brief spat in the middle of the path. The south Robin is now missing some feathers on the right side of its neck, so it looks as if they've had a serious fight.

The Little Owl at the Round Pond looked down from the top of the horse chestnut tree.

Pigeon Eater was on the Dell restaurant roof looking bored.

It wasn't a particularly warm day but a Cormorant on a post at Peter Pan seemed to be feeling hot and was panting to cool down.

One of the Great Crested Grebe chicks on the Serpentine was fishing by itself. They are beginning to lose their juvenile stripes.

The Tufted drakes, always the last ducks to come out of eclipse, are beginning to get their white sides again.

But a group of Egyptian Geese on the Serpentine, way out of sync with the northern seasons as they often are, are still in the middle of moulting their wing feathers. Some Egyptians did it in June along with the big geese.

An aged Buff-Tailed Bumblebee tried to climb up a plant, gives up, took off and fell in the lake. I fished it out and put it on a flower to dry. I don't think it will have lived for much longer but at least it had somewhere comfortable to die.

In the Rose Garden with its year-round flowers bumblebees often live through the winter. This one was in a patch of withered plumbago, but was much more interested in an arbutus flower that had fallen into the middle.

Then it flew down to work over more fallen flowers on the ground.

A Speckled Wood butterfly perched on a Mexican orange leaf.

A beetle ran across the pavement in the Italian Garden. I think it's a Strawberry Seed Beetle, Harpalus rufipes.