The Moorhens nesting under the boat hire platform have four chicks, but the whole family is difficult to see as they tend to hide under the platform. This parent had just brought in the bottom of a cone filled with strawberry ice cream (on far left) which, surprisingly, the chicks didn't like, and is giving them some familiar algae instead.

The single Great Crested Grebe chick from the west end of the island is now big enough to swallow the smallest fish currently available in the lake, which are about two and a half inches long. You can see a feather coming loose from its father's back; carrying baby birds about makes a mess of the wings. Fortunately the adults moult and regrow their flight feathers towards the end of the summer, and are then ready to fly to the Thames if the lake freezes in winter.

The smaller grebe chicks from the end of the lake are having to be content with little crayfish. The Turkish crayfish in the lake have bounced back strongly from being nearly wiped out in 2008 (or totally wiped out and deliberately reintroduced by the mysterious person who secretly traps and sells them), and the largest of them are now at least 10 inches long.

A Grey Wagtail was collecting insects on the shore of the Serpentine.

Later, I saw one repeatedly flying out from under the plank bridge in the Dell where their nest is and catching insects over the stream. I am not sure whether we have one pair or two, but there are certainly only a few of them, unlike Pied Wagtails which are quite numerous and often seen in a group on the Parade Ground.

The Common Terns are still fishing on the Long Water -- at least, one of them is, I didn't see the other today. There are also still plenty of Swifts. Green Woodpeckers were calling in several parts of the park.

Here are two Ladybirds mating on a nettle leaf.

At first sight you would think that they were of different species, but in fact they are two colour morphs of the same species, the Harlequin Ladybird, Harmonia axyridis. The orange form is called succinea and the black form spectabilis. Harlequin Ladybirds are an invasive species, first seen in Sussex in 2004 and now rapidly spreading over southeast England and beyond.