The eight young Egyptian Geese at the Round Pond are now half grown and are losing their downy juvenile feathers and growing ginger adult ones.

They were having a peaceful time on a cold drizzly day with few irresponsible dog owners to menace them.

There are plenty of Pochards on the Round Pond, and also Red Crested Pochards. This picture shows the difference between drakes of each species.

Although both are diving ducks with bright chestnut heads and red eyes, their resemblance is superficial. Red Crested Pochards are considerably larger. They are also classed in a different genus, Netta rufina, while the (Common) Pochard is Aythya ferina.

This is a first-year Carrion Crow from the large colony of crows at the northwest corner of Kensington Gardens. Its wing feathers are severely bleached through lack of melanin, the result of bad diet while it was growing up. With the café at the Diana playground and the cheap restaurants of Queensway close at hand, and people dropping snacks all over the area, they have an unhealthy quantity of junk food.

But the crow will look better when it gets its first set of new feathers next year. They are less exposed to this trouble when they have stopped growing.

The male Little Owl came out for a while despite the chilly drizzle.

And the female Tawny Owl also emerged on to her sheltered branch. There were a couple of Magpies around, but not enough to bother her. There have to be at least four Magpies before they can work up the necessary mob hysteria. It was raining quite hard when I took this dim picture, and you can see the water running down the trunk of the beech tree.

In the rowan tree on Buck Hill, a Song Thrush was hanging upside down to reach some berries.

At Peter Pan, one of the two young Great Crested Grebes was staring idly at a couple of Moorhens.