Cooling down

The cooler weather is bringing out plenty of small birds. A Chaffinch ...

... a Coal Tit ...

... and a Blue Tit could be seen in the bushes near Mound Gate ...

... and in the Flower Walk, as well as the usual mob of Great Tits, two Robins came to my hand to be fed.

Near Peter Pan, a young Blackbird was climbing around in some ordinary-looking plants and I wondered what the attraction was. I looked up the plant and I think it's spindle, in which case it should have some berries.

Jackdaws have moved across the Long Water to the Rudolf Steiner bench opposite Peter Pan. They are all familiar faces and come out to be given peanuts.

The female Peregrine preened on the barracks tower.

A young Herring Gull played with a stick.

The Moorhens at the small boathouse have been inconvenienced by the removal of the tarpaulin around the building where they had a nest, but they were still there.

The three teenage Mute cygnets from the nest on the gravel bank preened together on the edge of the Serpentine.

Two female Common Pochards dived busily in the Long Water to bring up algae.

The four Mallard ducklings are growing visibly every day.

The stonecrop in the Dell attracted a Common Carder Bee ...

... and a Greenbottle fly.

I think that the flower this Buff-Tailed Bumblebee is visiting is a Blue Mist Spirea.

A sweet chestnut tree by the Serpentine was heavily laden with nuts, perhaps as a reaction to the recent drought. Stress can cause a plant to produce heavily, as if it knew it was in danger.

The pomegranates on the bush behind the Big Bird statue are now the size of cricket balls.