A look at Long-Tailed Tits

At last Blackbirds have started eating the rowan fruit on Buck Hill. Joan Chatterley took this picture.

Blackbirds and other thrushes tend to wait till the fruit is completely ripe, but it's a race against time as Wood Pigeons, Rose-Ringed Parakeets and Starlings will eat it before then, and by the time the thrushes get to the fruit most of it has already gone. One of the two surviving rowans on Buck Hill has already been almost completely stripped.

Winter migrant Mistle Thrushes arriving from Northern Europe in autumn have already been reported on the London Bird Club Wiki. You can sometimes see quite large flocks, but the most I've ever seen in the park is 35. Here are some in the grass on Buck Hill.

Three fine pictures by Virginia: a pair of Black-Headed Gulls displaying to each other on the edge of the Serpentine ...

... a Cormorant jumping on to a chain at the island, from where it will climb on to a post ...

...and a sleeping Coot teenager in the care of a parent.

Two more pictures from Joan: a Grey Heron fishing on the edge of the Mute Swans' nesting island ...

... and an odd shot of a squirrel apparently eating grass. I think there was probably a tastier plant in the grass: dandelion, clover or bird's-foot trefoil.

Today's look back is at Long-Tailed Tits, utterly charming little birds which seldom fail to provide a pleasing photograph.

Flocks range ceaselessly through the trees in pursuit of insects, but they often spend some time in hawthorn trees where, it seems, insects are particularly plentiful, especially when the Hawthorn Moth has infested the tree.

In winter when insects are scarce they will also eat seeds.

The build their intricate nests inside bushes, but you can usually find at least one reasonably visible nest every year. The nest is a grapefruit-sized sphere made of moss and lichen ...

... held together with spider webs ...

... and lined with feathers.

In 2020 there were two easily seen nests in the Rose Garden. One was in a gorse bush, but sadly it was too visible and was predated soon after the chicks hatched.

The other was in a broom bush ...

... and succeeded triumphantly with five chicks fledged. I could never get a picture of more than four of them looking out of the nest, but Virginia got this splendid shot of all five of them.

The parents were frantically busy bringing insects ...

... and caterpillars to the chicks.

Here is a video of them being fed.

When the fledglings emerge they are brown. Their orange eyelids blush red when they are excited by a parent bringing food.

In a couple of weeks they are hunting for themselves.