Three owlets in a tree

The Little Owls near the Round Pond were active today. The three owlets were all in the same horse chestnut tree ... 

... with their mother.

Usually she goes to another tree to avoid being pestered by them.

The female at the Serpentine Gallery was hard to see among the sweet chestnut leaves, and I couldn't find any of the owlets. They are much more mobile now and may have been in a different tree, perhaps with their still undiscovered father.

In a nearby tree a Robin was scolding a Magpie rather indistinctly, because it had an insect in its beak. It couldn't go to its nest while the predator was watching. I bribed the Magpie to leave by throwing a peanut some distance away.

The young Carrion Crow here has not yet learnt how to shell a peanut, and was demanding that a parent should do it.

It did get its peanut.

A crow near the Dell restaurant played with a feather.

The pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gull hadn't had his lunch, and was stalking around looking for a chance to grab it.

The Coots nesting on the old water filter under the Italian Garden lost their chicks and have just started nesting again. So far there is one egg.

The Moorhens in the Dell are nesting on a rock below the small waterfall.

I was taking a picture of the crowd of Canada and Greylag Geese by the gravel bank on the Long Water, just to show how many there were, and look what cropped up in the background next to the Grey Heron.

The geese didn't seem worried. The Egyptian was actually on the gravel only a few feet away from it.

I can't explain the heavy losses of Mute cygnets on both the Long Water and the Serpentine. Everywhere else the swans seem to be doing fine. Here is a picture by Julia Schmitt of seven cygnets at St Katharine's Dock.

Six-Spot Burnet Moths and a Meadow Brown butterfly fed on ragwort beside the Long Water.

Neil got an interesting picture of a cocoon which presumably is going to produce a Burnet Moth.

A Honeybee browsed on a clump of Verbena bonariensis in the Rose Garden.