A Long-Tailed Tit was gathering cobwebs from a tree near the Queen's Temple. With its face obscured by a bundle of web, it is abseiling down the tree to pull out more (which answers the question of whether birds can walk backwards).

A Long-Tailed Tit's nest is spherical, a bit bigger than a grapefruit. The outside is made of spider's webs and moss, and it is lined with thousands of small downy feathers stuck in point outwards to make a comfortable mattress for the sitting bird. All these materials have to be gathered by two very small birds and skilfully assembled every year.

This Great Spotted Woodpecker was hacking away at a tree between the Speke obelisk and the Italian Garden. It was making a tremendous noise, and when I took the picture I thought it was making a nest hole.

But it seems to have an insect in its beak, and the surface it is pecking at doesn't look like the beginning of a hole, so I think it was just gathering bugs.

These Herring Gulls were waving leaves at each other. They must be a couple, because a third gull that tried to butt in was chased off, after which the male called loud and long to celebrate his victory.

Leaves seem to be a symbol of nest building in several species. Everyone know about the weed dance of Great Crested Grebes, but I have also seen a Red Crested Pochard couple waving leaves. Whether these gulls were doing the same is not certain.

The partial draining of the Round Pond has created a beach around the edge, much visited by gulls and Egyptian Geese. Here a blonde female gets chased away by a couple. She gave as good as she got, turning round and yelling at them.

Two Goldcrests were flirting in the yew tree at the southwest corner of the bridge, at the bottom of the steps. This is not a good picture, but one is lucky to get a picture at all of one of these tiny, fast moving birds, which are usually hidden by the foliage of the evergreen trees they frequent.

This proud Blackbird is standing among the spring shoots of giant hogweed, an invasive, poisonous foreign plant that grows in abundance on the west side of the Long Water near the Italian Garden. The stems will be six feet tall in a couple of months.

The male Tawny Owl hadn't emerged from his tree by 4.15 pm, when I gave up looking for him and went home.