Common Sandpipers

A pair of Common Sandpipers were reported on the Long Water. I got two hasty pictures, but I'm not sure whether they show both birds or the same one twice.

The male Blackbird of the pair nesting by the Speke obelisk is in fine song after his early spring practice.

A Wren shouted furiously at a Jay in a bush near Peter Pan.

The Jay chicks by Andrew Skeet's window sill are growing fast and becoming quite boisterous on their ninth day.

A Starling arrived on the roof of the Buck Hill shelter with insects for the nest in the eaves.

A Pied Wagtail caught a midge on the Lido jetty.

Two fine pictures by Ahmet Amerikali: a Reed Warbler in the small patch of reeds by the bridge ...

... and a splendid view of a Cetti's Warbler at Russia Dock Woodland, a most challenging bird to photograph as they skulk in the undergrowth and only very seldom come into view.

A young Herring Gull on the Serpentine played with a bit of rotten wood it had fished up from the bottom.

A pair of Great Crested Grebes were making a futile attempt to build a nest against one of the wire baskets on the island. The just don't have the skill to attach twigs to the mesh, and the only way they ever manage to nest here is to wait till a Coot starts building a nest and then steal it -- which they have done several times in previous years.

The Coot nest in deep water at the outflow is now well above the surface and quite usable. But the pair will need several weeks without a strong west wind if they are going to succeed here. All previous nests in this place have been washed away.

Three chicks have emerged from a nest in one of the small boathouses. Coots nest in this place every year.

The brood of eleven Egyptian goslings on the south shore of the Serpentine was still amazingly intact. Their parents brought them under an aspen tree, safe from swooping gulls, where they grazed among the fallen flowers.

The ten goslings at the Round Pond were also all present in a heap among the daisies.

Nearby a Specked Wood butterfly rested on a daisy, with a fly on the next flower, species uncertain even to the eagle eye of Conehead 54.

In the Rose Garden a worker Honeybee browsed on Mexican Orange blossom, and a drone on an allium flower.