Goldcrests

Three Goldcrests appeared today. A smart one looked out of a yew in the leaf yard ...

... and there was a pair, both looking tatty after raising young, in another yew in the Dell. I only got a picture of one and didn't see the young clearly, but there was a lot of movement inside the tree.

A Robin lurked in a bush in the Rose Garden. The small birds here are as shy as completely wild birds, and even the normally confident Great Tits are wary compared to the ones in the Flower Walk which come out calling to be fed. The difference is that no one feeds the birds in the Rose Garden.

The family of white Feral Pigeons with symmetrical black markings like a Rorschach inkblot test is usually seen near Peter Pan, but today one of them had flown down to the Lido.

Both Peregrines were on the tower in the morning, but the male had left by the time I got there.

The two Grey Heron chicks -- if you can call these great gawky creatures chicks -- were milling around in the trees on the island.

A parent was diligently fishing to feed the ravenous young.

Great Crested Grebes were moving around the Long Water skimming just below the surface. This is a typical grebe activity. I think they are catching very small fish which can be swallowed immediately without stopping.

A Moorhen at the boathouses was building a second nest, as Moorhens do when their young have hatched. The blue sheet is a heavy tarpaulin used to make a coffer dam around one of the boathouses while its brick foundations were being repaired.

One of the three chicks.

The Mallard mother was nearby. She has lost another duckling and is down to four, but the young are now almost large enough to be out of danger from gulls and the odds are beginning to turn in their favour. Considering that most ducklings get eaten within a couple of days she has done remarkably well. She started on the Round Pond with seven, trekked half a mile overland to the lake, losing one on the way, and has been constantly attending to them on the dangerous lake for several weeks.

The female Mute Swan of the dominant pair on the Long Water was cruising confidently with the teenage cygnets next to the bridge on their newly cleared territory.

Her mate, his fighting done, was asleep on the gravel strip.

The pair are now pushing their rivals well beyond the bridge and down the Serpentine, along with their three cygnets. It seems odd that the rival pair, so tough in claiming territory on the Long Water when they wanted to nest, have now given up so easily. But they lack the sustained bloody-mindedness of the dominant male on the Long Water.

The West of England Goose which flew into the park to moult in June seems to have found a mate and settled down on the Serpentine near the Lido.

A stare from its strange blue eyes.

The long-lasting Verbena bonariensis is still in bloom in the Flower Walk and attracting plenty of bees, such as this Common Carder.