The Blue Tits' nest in the lamp post on the path behind the Lido is a going concern. Here a parent brings an insect to the chicks.

A brood of Great Tits are out of their nests already in Hyde Park near the north end of the bridge. The young birds are chasing their parents, begging for food with scratchy calls.

Four pairs of House Martins are building nests in the cornice of the Kuwaiti embassy. Not many, but the colony seems to be re-establishing itself after its recent near collapse.

There were only two Swifts, but the comings and goings of these mysterious birds are quite unpredictable.

No Swallows have been seen for several days, but they never stay long in the park, and they have performed their duty of announcing the spring. A Greek vase of about 510 BC, now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, shows three people looking at the first swallow of spring. Inscriptions too faint to show in the photograph, and written in the peculiar spelling of the Athenian dialect, say:
ΙΔΟ ΧΕΛΙΔΟΝ / ΝΕ ΤΟΝ ΗΕΡΑΚΛΕΑ / ΗΑΥΤΕΙ / ΕΑΡ ΕΔΕ
Look, a swallow / Yes, by Herakles / There it is / Spring already!

The Mute Swan family ventured on to the Long Water to eat leaves off the willow tree near the bridge. But there was a pair of males shaping up for a fight,

so they soon went back to the relative safety of the Serpentine. When I passed their nest later, the mother and the cygnets were all back on it peacefully dozing.

No Tawny Owls to be seen, but I heard the female calling from the tree immediately north of the nest tree.