For the second day running the Bearded Tits have been very restless, constantly flying up and down their little reed bed. This one paused for a few seconds to eat a couple of seeds before taking wing again.

I think they are preparing to leave. We shall be sad to lose them, but we shall wish them the best of luck on their journey to find a bigger reed bed and more Bearded Tits. We have been absolutely spoilt by seeing these lovely birds only a few feet away. Normally it would involve squelching around a marsh to get within 50 yards of one half-glimpsed among the stems or elusively flitting away over the top of the reeds.

There was a Treecreeper in the tall conical water fir tree beside the outflow of the Serpentine, the first time I have seen one in this part of the park. Probably it spends most of its time in the Dell, where there are more trees and no people to disturb it.

The water fir, Glyptostrobus pensilis, is a rarity: it has been more or less wiped out in its native China by intensive agriculture, and now hangs on to existence in Vietnam and Laos.

I published eight pictures of different pigeon colours and patterns on 3 February, but today found one that I had missed.

This is a 'brown' variant of the normal Rock Dove pattern, caused by a low amount of black eumelanin pigment and a normal amount of reddish-brown phaeomelanin. Most 'brown' pigeons are variants of the solid dark grey morph which, when browned, produces a bird that is plain brown. Here the lack of eumelanin shows mainly in the wing bars, which in a normally coloured bird would be dark grey.

Humans also have eumelanin and phaeomelanin. If this ratio of the two were found in a human, that person would have auburn hair.

Here is a female Pochard having a rest.

For them the brown and grey colour is normal, and a flood of phaeomelanin produces the bright ginger head and red eyes of the male.