A male Chaffinch sang the so-called 'rain song' in a treetop near the Speke obelisk. This seems to have worked because it did rain in the afternoon after a long dry spell ...
... to the delight of a female Blackbird looking for worms.
A young Great Tit chased its parents through a lime tree near the Dell.
Ahmet Amerikali found five Goldcrest chicks in the Flower Walk, with their parents frantically feeding them. This is his picture of one of them.
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He also found a strangely dishevelled young Long-Tailed Tit near the Diana memorial car park.
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An odd outline near the leaf yard turned out to be a pair of Carrion Crows sunbathing together.
It took two visits to the Round Pond to find the Little Owl. The first time the resident female Kestrel swept over.
The second time there he was looking down from his favourite horse chestnut tree, which gives him a good view of the hole in the dead tree where his mate is nesting.
This is important because I have a report that a Jay has been troubling him on the dead tree. All I found when I was there was a Jackdaw looking peaceful but rather hot in a hawthorn.
One of the young Grey Herons from the second brood has appeared on the Serpentine island. Harsh cries from the bushes showed that its sibling was down too.
I haven't heard anything from the third nest recently. It may have failed, though herons have a way of surprising you after a long time with no sign of them.
An adult sunbathed next to the boat hire platform, ignoring the passing Sunday crowd.
More Coot chicks have appeared in the second brood in the Italian Garden fountains, making five in addition to the seven from the first brood in the next pool.
Just one chick has survived in the nest at Peter Pan, but it has been hanging on tenaciously for several days and is growing. I hope its parents don't abandon it and start nesting again, as they sometimes do.
Egyptian goslings sheltered from the hot sun under their mother while she preened.
The Black Swan attended to his splendid ruffles.
Two remarkable pictures from the allotment by Nick Abalov: a Speckled Bush Cricket, Leptophyes punctatissima ...
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... and a tiny Flower Crab Spider, Misumena vatia.
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I wonder what makes that species of spider any more hated than the rest of the breed. Strange name.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to that Long Tailed Tit? It looks distressed.
Tinúviel
The Flower Crab spider doesn't spin a web. It's a ferocious hunter and rushes boldly at much larger insects. That's not much of an explanation but it's the only one I can think of.
DeleteMaybe the young Long-Tailed Tit had been bathing and was still wet.
The spider in the picture has spun a couple of threads to the next petal, and has its right front foot on one of them. I think this is an insect detector: if an insect moves on the next petal the spider will sense the vibration and rush forward.
Delete