A Goldcrest dashed around in the shrubbery in the Rose Garden.
A Wren was leaping about in a bush near the bridge, as usual scolding some predator. They seem to spend much of their life in a state of fury.
All the House Martins have gone from the Round Pond, but there were half a dozen Sand Martins.
The Reed Warbler at the Italian Garden was still hunting for the two fledglings. It's unusually visible for two reasons. It was here last year and got used to being stared at and photographed, and we're viewing it from the water side of the reed bed where it comes out at the front to get from one part of the bed to another.
The male Little Owl at the Round Pond was out in what is currently his usual place. You think he'll always be there but sooner or later he's going to tire of it, move to a new favourite spot, and never return to this branch.
The owlet at the Serpentine Gallery was still in the lime tree, though not showing well.
Later its mother turned up and could be seen clearly.
The pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gull's mate was in the same patch of the Serpentine as when we saw her on Friday, still relentlessly pursued by her begging offspring.
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The Great Crested Grebe chicks at the bridge were being fed.
Only two can be seen in these pictures. The third was under the willow tree.
One of the two very blonde Egyptian Geese on the Serpentine preened her peculiar flight feathers, pale grey with white streaks. The normal colour is a very dark greyish brown, almost black ...
... as you can see in this Egyptian standing on the weatherbeaten head of one of the Westbourne river nymphs in the Italian Garden.
The Mallard at Peter Pan still has two ducklings.
A Hornet Hoverfly fed on a Snowberry flower near Mount Gate.
There was also a Holly Blue butterfly on the bush.
The Scarlet Beebalm in the Rose Garden is still attracting Common Carder bees.
I wouldn't describe this colour as scarlet. But perhaps the plant was named before the name 'magenta' was coined in 1859. In this year the French chemist François-Emmanuel Verguin synthesised a bright aniline dye which he called 'fuchsine' after the Fuschsia flower. But on 4 June the French army won a battle against the Austrians at Magenta in Lombardy and the dye was vaingloriously renamed, possibly in reference to the bloodstained river after the battle.
You wait years to see a Giant Polypore fungus and then two come along at once. This one was near the Serpentine Gallery.
I've looked up pictures of the flower and in some of them they look indeed scarlet or crimson. Perhaps it's a different subspecies?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if those very pale feathers wouldn't be frailer or more fragile than feathers with an ordinary, darker pigmentation. The bird does look dishevelled,
Tinúviel
Thank you. Many weird things emerge from the greenhouses in the park, including more varieties of Salvia than you would believe possible. Not being a gardener myself, and much preferring wild weeds to cultivated flowers, I find it perverse.
DeleteProbably the partial pigmentation of the ultra-blonde Egyptians' wings is enough to get them through the year. They have been here for three years, I think, and I've never seen them at a disadvantage. But it's certainly true that melanin stiffens feathers and makes them more resistant to fraying, as borne out by the many pale birds that have black-tipped primaries.