Coal Tits

The pair of Coal Tits arrived in the corkscrew hazel together, and both came to my hand.

A Goldcrest flitted around in the big yew tree on the corner of the Dell.

A Great Spotted Woodpecker called from an oak by the leaf yard.

The female Peregrine was on the barracks eating something, probably a pigeon, on the shelf behind her. Mostly you could only see her back, but she looked round for a moment.

There was excitement when what looked like a White Stork flew over very high, but when I got home and blew up the picture it turned out to be an ordinary Grey Heron flying in an unusual posture with its neck extended. Normally they fly with their neck pulled in like the U bend under the sink.

Above it a pair of Buzzards circled, but they were much too high to photograph. 

Filmed yesterday: a Coot had laid an egg at the bridge and was hastily building a nest before it laid any more. It didn't matter that the egg was partly in the water, as the Coot would pull it up when the nest is more complete, and it won't start incubating and warming the eggs until it has a reasonable number so that they all hatch more or less at once.

Today's picture found the nest much larger and already with a comfortable grass lining. Coots are fast workers.

There were four Mandarins on the Long Water, though I couldn't get them all in the same shot -- three drakes and a female. An aggressive Coot gave them a momentary scare.

I haven't seen this goose on the Serpentine before. Presumably it's an unusually pale West of England Goose, a domestic breed of Greylag which is usually a patchwork of white and normal Greylag pattern.

The Mute Swan nesting at the Serpentine outflow now has one egg.

So does the swan at the west end of the Lido restaurant terrace.

Otherwise the scene is the same, with the nesting swan at the other end of the Lido dozing peacefully on an unknown number of eggs -- five a few days ago -- and the dominant female on the Long Water still unsettled and cruising around.

There was a Wood Mouse on the path in the Flower Walk, only the second I've seen in the park. They are quite common but exceptionally furtive.

A fox was asleep beside the Long Water.

A Hairy-Footed Flower Bee climbed on a wallflower in the Flower Walk. This is a brown male; females are black.

A Painted Nomad Bee rested on a leaf in the Rose Garden ...

... where the Dark-Edged Bee Fly was in almost the same place as yesterday, though it had moved to an anemone.

A dandelion in the Rose Garden had already gone to seed.

Cowslips have come up by the bridge, as they do every spring.