Coal Tits, Mute Swans and Egyptian Geese at war

A Robin perched in the corkscrew hazel bush in the Flower Walk.

The usual female Coal Tit was there too and came out to be fed.

When I came back later there were three Coal Tits: the established pair of which only the female will come to your hand, and the other male which is also hand tame in spite of being a new arrival. He is aggressive towards the pair and tries to chase the male away. Here he is collecting a pine nut from Neil's hand.

The Little Owl near the Speke obelisk was out on a branch in front of his hole.

Abigail found a Lesser Black-Backed Gull eating a squirrel on the north side of the Round Pond. It looks very pale in the strong cross light, but I'm pretty sure from the colour of its feet that it's the gull I videoed on 2 October eating a pigeon it had killed. Of course it would not have killed the squirrel: there are limits even for gulls.

The number of Cormorants is now down to about 30, but I think that's pure chance as they can hardly have hoovered up all the medium-sized fish in the lake already.

Tinúviel was at the Los Barruecos nature reserve near Cáceres in Spain, where she saw a remarkable 13 Little Grebes together, many of them young. It must have been several families.

Virginia sent this beautiful picture of a pair of Moorhens on a post in the evening light. The male decided not to mate, as even sure-footed Moorhens would have overbalanced there.

All was well with the new pair of Mute Swans in the Italian Garden ...

... but the situation on the main lake remains confused. There was one male swan on the gravel strip. Impossible to tell at that distance whether it was the old dominant swan or the one which had nested on the gravel. There was no sign of a mate or any of the teenage cygnets.

But the pair with five cygnets which have flown in and upset everything were on the Serpentine near the bridge. They came under the bridge for a short time, but when they saw the swan on the gravel they quickly retreated.

There are some teenage cygnets on the Round Pond. Could they have been driven up there from the Long Water by some unseen fight?

Three pairs of Egyptians on the south side of the Serpentine were in an unusually aggressive mood, even for these fiercely territorial birds.

Honeybees and a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee browsed on purple Michaelmas daisies in the Rose Garden. Two Common Wasps tried to attack the bumblebee, but it just shrugged them off and carried on feeding.

Several wasps were prowling around in the grass below, evidently hunting small insects.

The ivy at the back of the Lido is in flower, attracting hordes of wasps ...

... and a Tapered Drone Fly, Eristalis pertinax. I was hoping to find an Ivy Bee, but didn't.

For some reason the pussy willow tree near the bridge was also crowded with wasps. I can't think what attracted them here.