A Grey Heron was building up one of the nests on the island.

They aren't attending to these with much enthusiasm, but occasionally one starts picking up twigs and does a few minutes' work.

On the shore beneath, a heron had somehow found a large piece of raw meat. This looked more like something from a butcher than a chunk ripped off a corpse in the shrubbery.

The bird was having trouble trying to swallow it. I didn't wait to see what happened eventually.

This was not the heron that haunts the Dell restaurant -- if it were, the meat might have been stolen from the kitchen. The restaurant heron was at a table with people who were kindly giving it pizza and chocolate cake, much easier treats to swallow.

Herons seem to be able to eat anything and thrive on it.

There was no sign of the Black Swan, or of his Mute Swan girlfriend, although I went round the whole lake twice and also checked the Round Pond. They may have been on the wrong side of the island or behind some moored boats.

The girlfriend's brother was eating some spaghetti which someone had weirdly thrown into the lake. He seemed to like it. Swan eat algae, and are used to stringy things.

Soon an adult swan arrived and chased him off before returning to eat the rest of the spaghetti.

Suddenly there are a lot of Pochards on the Long Water.

It is remarkable how they come and go: one day there might be none apart from the handful of residents at the Serpentine island, the next day forty. Where do they go when they aren't here?

A Song Thrush was singing from the top of a tree near the bridge.

There was also a singing Blackbird near the rowan trees on Buck Hill, where this Mistle Thrush was eating berries.

The grass under the Henry Moore sculpture is now often visited by Jackdaws looking for worms. This one was idly playing with a dead leaf.

A Nuthatch came down to take nuts from the railings of the leaf yard.