All five Moorhen chicks on the Italian Garden pond are in good order, and were busily swimming about between the plant clumps while their mother fed them on algae. One of the reasons why Moorhens are so successful is that they can eat anything. The chicks are growing visibly, and are now too heavy to stand on a patch of algae without sinking in. But they can still stroll through the holes in the wire mesh, while their parents climb nimbly over the top.

The Great Crested Grebe chicks on the Long Water were all off their parents' backs and swimming about on the far side of the lake calling continuously for food. The pitch of their calls rises a couple of notes when food is actually on its way and they sprint to seize it. They were too far away for a photograph.

The light-coloured mate of the female black and white Mallard has almost completely regrown his flight feathers, but it will be some time before he resumes his elegant breeding plumage. There is a small group of pale Mallard drakes on the lake, with iridescent heads that tend to purple rather than the usual green.

At the shallow edge the Long Water, a female Mallard swam inches above a couple of Common Carp, but neither took the slightest notice of each other.

At the Italian Garden, a Grey Heron examined an odd-looking floating ball to see if it was edible.

The last Olympic event on the Serpentine was today. So no more din from helicopters and loudspeakers at least. But it will take another twelve weeks before we are rid of the sprawling shanty town on the edge of the Serpentine, the Russian ice show, the African 'village', the theatre at Kensington Palace, the shop selling overpriced Olympic tat and, biggest of all, the evil empire of London Live that takes up the whole east end of the park. And when this last one has gone, revealing a vast area of churned mud, it will be time for the equally horrible German funfair to be put up, which will linger until the end of January. And after that we may have a couple of months of peace before some further commercial atrocity is inflicted on our poor park.