Family life

There are families of Great Tits all over the park with the young clamouring to be fed. Here are two in the Flower Walk.

There are also Blue Tit families, though not so many.

A flock of Starlings with noisy young looked for worms and insects in the grass under a tree near the Dell.

A Magpie instructed one of its young on the best way to annoy a Grey Heron, which is to creep up behind it and pull its tail.

The Coots nesting on a post right next to the waterfront at Peter Pan have brought out two chicks. There don't seem to be any more.

The three teenage Coots in the Italian Garden preened on a plank. A parent had an enthusiastic wash and joined them on the plank.

Every year Coots build nests between the plastic buoys at the Lido. There are three here at the moment. I've never known a nest to succeed in this exposed spot.

The Mute Swan from the boathouse brought out her cygnet. She has only one.

The combined family of Canada Geese with two sets of parents looked for tasty plants along the edge of the shrubbery near the bridge. I was a bit worried to see them there, since several months ago a brood of Egyptian Geese ate an unknown poisonous plant and all died, and more recently I saw a Tufted Duck looking very groggy there. But fortunately they suffered no ill effects.

Another familiar goose has returned to the Serpentine to moult, the one with white patches and blue eyes. It may be a West of England Goose, which is a domestic variety of Greylag, or a hybrid, or just a partly leucistic wild bird.

An Egyptian Goose near the Dell restaurant is regrowing its flight feathers after moulting.

A Mallard duckling in the Italian Garden is growing its first set.

Large carp were swimming around at the the Serpentine outflow.

A Common Blue butterfly perched on a rose in the Rose Garden.

A Vestal Cuckoo Bumblebee ...

... and a Common Carder worked over the lavender patch.

Tom was at Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, where a Black-Browed Albatross has turned up, and got a fine picture of it.

Update: an anonymous comment below: 'I think this is the only Albatross in the Northern Hemisphere. It has been nicknamed Albert and is regularly seen in Helgoland.' Tom confirms this information.