An odd sight: a Great Tit near the Queen's Temple was carrying a leaf on a long stem, and there was something attached to the stem. I wondered what was going on, and quickly took a few pictures before it flew off, still holding the stem.

This seems to be a caterpillar or pupa fixed to the stem. Evidently the tit couldn't remove it on the spot, and so ripped the whole thing down and carried it away to deal with it at leisure in a quiet place.

There is a holly tree halfway between Peter Pan and the Italian Garden, on the lake side of the path. It is a gathering place for Starlings, not just when the berries are ripe -- they aren't yet -- but at all times of year. Today it was particularly noisy with the chattering of the birds, though it is quite hard to actually see any of them among the dense evergreen leaves. However, one of them came out to eat some blackberries on a bramble that had grown up the tree.

Here is a Speckled Wood butterfly, Pararge aegeria, I think a male one.

They are more ready than many species to spread their wings out in the sunlight, and this one obligingly posed on a nettle beside the leaf yard to give me a fine view.

Both the young Hobbies were perched side by side in their usual tall plane tree between the Queen's Temple and the Physical Energy statue, while their parents circled catching dragonflies for them.

Speaking of Hobbies, I made a foolish mistake in my blog post for Wednesday 28 August, which is here. I was watching the Hobbies in the same area as today, and managed to get a picture of a bird flying over near the Round Pond, which I put up on the blog without looking at it carefully. It is not a Hobby: it is something more unusual, a Red Kite. These birds are just beginning to visit London as they spread down the M40 motorway from the West Midlands, and this is the third sighting this year. (Moral: don't take your pictures for granted.)

Update: Mario has identified the mysterious thing on the leaf stem -- see comment below.