The male Little Owl at the leaf yard wasn't in his usual chestnut tree. Just as I found him in the next tree up the hill a squirrel rushed up the branch in front of him ...

... and stared cheekily at him. He looked absolutely furious.

A pair of Nuthatches appeared in the leaf yard.

Two pictures taken in the long grass nearby: a Magpie sunbathing ...

... and a Mistle Thrush which had come down to drink from a puddle in the place where a broken drain has caused a flood.

A family of Long-Tailed Tits flew across the path. This is one of the young birds.

A Carrion Crow enjoyed a splashy bath under the spray of the marble fountain in the Italian Garden ...

... and flew up into the dead willow tree to dry itself.

The Great Crested Grebes at the island have managed to rebuild their nest after a fashion, though it is no longer the solid structure they stole from the Coots and is attached to the wire mesh only by a single stick. They mated on it. I do hope this doesn't cause them to abandon their two chicks.

A Coot nesting next to the reed bed near the bridge bit through a reed stem to add it to the nest.

There was a report of a family of Egyptian Geese with two goslings near the Italian Garden. I couldn't find them, but I did find the hopeless pair who lose all their young, who were making a racket on the little island where the Mute Swans nested. Luckily they didn't seem to have any doomed offspring.

The swans were at Peter Pan, eating the water weed which is now covering the Long Water. I think this stringy stuff is plants, not algae.

I was told that there was a new family of Mute Swans with four cygnets on the Serpentine, but could only find three of them swimming around. It was only some time later that I found the fourth one on the shore with its father.

The Mute Swan family usually seen on the south shore of the Serpentine crossed to the sheltered water at the island to get away from the crowds of Bank Holiday visitors in pedalos.

A Gadwall drake preened his wings on the edge of the Serpentine.