The story of the Bearded Tits

The bold male Chaffinch at Mound Gate is fond of pine nuts. I shall resume feeding him when I'm back on my feet.

Neil got a fine picture of a Chiffchaff.

David Element took this remarkable shot of a pair of Common Darter dragonflies in the air, with the male in front gripping the female before mating.

He also sent this interesting picture of a horse chestnut tree coming back into flower a few days ago. The trees have been severely stressed by the double blow of Leaf Miner moth and the drought, and this is their response. I have seen the same thing on the very broken horse chestnut between the bridge and the Vista, but now another large piece has fallen off that tree and it might finally give up.

Two action shots by Ahmet Amerikali: a Carrion Crow flying with an apple stolen from the parakeet feeders ...

... and a Cormorant on the Long Water with a perch.

The male Blackbird in the Dell will come out to pick up sultanas. His mate bathed in the pool at the top of the waterfall.

The shallow water in front of the Peter Pan statue is an ideal place to film Tufted Ducks diving.

When people are feeding the ducks, Black-Headed Gulls hover, hoping to be able to swoop down and grab a bit of food.

A stone relief in the Italian Garden shows the Victorian attitude to wildlife.

Another retrospective picture series, this time looking back to January and February 2013 when the reed bed at the Diana fountain, which had been planted quite recently, attracted a pair of female Bearded Tits, the first ones ever seen in central London.

They fed happily on the abundant seeds of the Phragmites reeds ...

... and were not fazed when one day it snowed.

Naturally they attracted mobs of photographers but this didn't seem to worry them either, and in fact they seemed quite curious.

The story of how they arrived is partly known, as they were spotted several times on their journey to and from the park. The two females and two males had been ringed in 2012 at the Rye Meads nature reserve in Hertfordshire, on the upper reaches of the River Lea which flows south into the Thames. From here they flew south down the river from reed bed to reed bed. At some point the females became separated from the males.

When the two female birds got down to the Olympic Park they must have preferred the look of the Hertford Union Canal which leads westward off the river, so off they set along it towards central London. This canal connects with the Regent's Canal, which runs north of King's Cross Station and along the north side of Regent's Park. Despite their urban setting, the banks of both canals have quite a lot of wild scrubland where there would have been enough seeds to sustain the birds.

They followed the Regent's Canal all the way to the island north of Paddington Station where it joins the Grand Union Canal, and here for some reason they chose to turn south along the short arm of the canal that goes to Paddington Basin, originally built so that goods could be transferred between the canal and the Great Western Railway. There is almost nothing to interest a seed-eating bird here, but it is only a mile over the town to the park, and somehow they knew it was there and found a brand new reed bed waiting for them. This is the most mysterious part of the journey: how were they aware of their destination? Bearded Tits are not soaring birds viewing the wide landscape from a great altitude: they flit from one patch of reeds to another.

Anyway, they arrived in the park in December 2012, where they were seen in the Diana reed bed by a birdwatcher whose name I don't know. It seems that he had no computer or mobile phone. He wrote a letter to one of his friends telling what he had seen, but word never got out more widely.

In January someone else spotted them, and then there was a sensation. I hurried to the spot and got my first pictures of them on the 11th, one of which is the first picture above. Usually photographing Bearded Tits is difficult work requiring patience and luck, but these were in a narrow strip of reeds a short way off the path, separated by a fence and a flower bed which kept people just far away from them for the birds not to feel threatened. So thousands of visitors got pictures of them -- you could get a reasonable shot on a mobile phone camera.

The last I saw of them was on 16 February. Shortly afterwards they left, returning home by the same route. They were later seen in Regent's Park.