Blackcaps are still singing occasionally. This one was at the foot of Buck Hill. The picture shows the severe damage caused to horse chestnut leaves by the Leaf Miner moth.
A rainy morning didn't deter the Swifts over the lake. They catch raindrops in midair to drink.
A Magpie stared challengingly from a dead tree, surrounded by dead roses.
A Carrion Crow stole a bit of bread someone was giving to the waterfowl. Their low-quality diet results in some of them, particularly the young ones that are still growing, having white patches on their feathers.
A Wood Pigeon wandered through the wildflowers at the back of the Lido, pecking idly at various leaves.
The male Little Owl by the Round Pond gave a single call which allowed me to find him easily. I think he wanted to stop me from crashing around under his tree, take a picture and go away.
The owlets at the Serpentine Gallery are still quite interested in the humans who come to look at them. It was starting to rain as I arrived, and one of them flew into the nest hole and vanished.
When the sun came out later, so did the owlet.
The young Grey Herons are quite hard to spot in their nest, and you seldom get more than a glimpse of them. The second one, on the right of the picture, only showed as a slight movement behind the leaves.
Adults don't exactly melt into reeds as a Bittern would, but their strongly vertical markings make them much less conspicuous.
One of the Moorhens nesting in the outflow of the Serpentine swan through water thick with algae after a few days of warm weather.
This pair of Mute Swans had the prime nesting location on the island and laid eggs, but failed to produce any young.
Meanwhile the pair on the other side of the lake nested in a perilous place at the mercy of foxes, dogs and humans, and have four cygnets which are growing fast.
The edge of the lake is lined with hundreds of Greylag and Canada Geese which have flown in to moult their flight feathers in safety. The swans, which are also moulting, are probably all residents; there are about 120 in the whole park.
Blondie was preening in her usual place at the Dell restaurant.
The Mallard drakes are going into eclipse before moulting.
The boat hire reopens in a few days. The gulls are giving the staff a Herculean labour in cleaning off their mess. (But if Hercules had had a jet washer he wouldn't have needed to divert the rivers Alpheios and Peneios to wash the filth out of the Augean stables.)
A Buff-Tailed Bumblebee and a Honeybee crossed paths on the peculiar spiky flower of an Eryngium.
A job for Sisyphus , jet washer or not.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Mythology aside, when Bluebird Boats expected to have all their boats out, as they did on sunny weekend days, they had their people arrive at 6am and opened at 10. Meanwhile the gulls were reversing all their work. It didn't help that the boats had to be bailed out after washing them.
DeleteI'll add tackling the Harpies to the mythological mix, too. They were as scatological as they come.
ReplyDeleteBeing called to by a Little Owl must be the closest thing to experiencing magic given to humans.
Tinúviel
A stable full of harpies is a truly alarming idea. Or maybe it should be a aviary, if that were not already full of Stymphalian Birds.
Delete