The Black Swan had abandoned the young Mute Swan it was with yesterday, and was following another one -- the single older one, already beginning to turn white -- which it had herded out from a group of swans at the edge of the water.  The young swan didn't like this attention and swam up and down the Serpentine at a brisk pace, but the Black Swan kept up with it.

The Egyptian Geese at the Round Pond have lost all their young, as was sadly expected. They were preening themselves unconcernedly on the edge of the pond.

The young Great Crested Grebes at the bridge had stopped pestering their parents for once, and were doing absolutely nothing, which grebes are very good at.

The place on the south shore of the Serpentine where the young Herring Gull can usually be found playing with various objects was today occupied by a young Lesser Black-Backed Gull, also playing with a dead leaf.

A pair of Shovellers were revolving under the parapet of the Italian Garden.

The Little Owls were in their usual places, the male in the downhill tree ...

... and the female in the uphill one. It is still quite mild, and these southern European birds can stay outside without discomfort.

This Grey Squirrel was eating yew berries in a tree near the Henry Moore statue.

The red flesh of the berry is quite sweet, but the seed inside is deadly poisonous. This doesn't matter to birds, because their quick digestive system passes the seed through unchanged, and in fact that is how the yew distributes its seeds. But the more thorough digestive system of a mammal would attack the seed and poison the animal. I could see that the squirrel was chewing the outside of the fruit off the seed and discarding the seed. I wonder how they learned to do this, especially as they have been in this country for less than 150 years. Of course any squirrels that ate yew seeds would have died.

This delicate little violet mushroom was growing near the Little Owls' trees. There was another one a few yards away, and just one more on Buck Hill. It isn't an Amethyst Deceiver, which has a much brighter colour. I think it is Inocybe geophylla var. lilacina, a species that has no English name.

Update: Mario has come to the rescue again and says it's Parasola plicatilis, Pleated Inkcap, also called Little Japanese Umbrella. Both English names are vividly descriptive.