A Great Tit near the bridge had found something unidentifiable wrapped up in a web ...
... which it was busily tearing off.
The Robin near the Henry Moore sculpture came out on the railings.
A Song Thrush foraged on the ground below.
A Wood Pigeon was eating hard unripe holly berries. When one gets into that position you know it's going to fall out soon, and so it did.
A Carrion Crow was panting in the heat.
The male Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery was in the lime tree.
It took quite a while to find him, and I didn't find an owl at the Round Pond at all.
There are more Cormorants daily. Seven stood in a row on the posts at Peter Pan ...
... and there were four more on the raft ...
... which called to mind the old children's prayer,
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on.
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels round my head;
One to watch and one to pray
And two to bear my soul away.
At the island, one jumped awkwardly on to a post and shook itself dry.
There was a Grey Heron at the near end of the row. It seemed impossible to get them all into focus, but then I remembered that my smaller camera has a 'landscape' getting that takes four photographs at different focuses and stitches them together. I tried this and it worked surprisingly well.
The Great Crested Grebe family from the bridge were in the middle of the Long Water.
This is the family from the Serpentine island.
Feeding the chicks is a tricky business ...
... because of the gulls waiting to snatch any fish and then fight over it.
The Mute cygnet from the island hasn't been seen for several days. There was a lone cygnet on the shore at the Dell restaurant, but it looks a bit too big to be the island cygnet and may have been one of the five that had wandered off by itself.
A clump of white-flowered stonecrop in the Rose Garden attracted Buff-Tailed Bumblebees.
Wood Pigeons always push their luck for that extra tasty berry and end up embarrassing themselves. Gotta love a Cormorant party!
ReplyDeleteSean
Wood pigeons falling on their faces is a classic that never gets old. By the way, it does look alarmed and wondering how it got itself into such a pickle before toppling down.
ReplyDeleteThat Heron-Cormorant death line does look like a fish's worst nightmares. If fishes have nightmares, that is.
Myself, I hope that was a spider the Tit was tearing into. So sue me!
Tinúviel
It could have been a spider's prey, wrapped up ready for the spider to eat. There are also web-spinning Ermine Moths here, though I think their caterpillars are smaller than whatever this was.
DeleteToday they had the cannon fire parade thing for the queen on the parade ground. It was very interesting but the enormous cannon fire made the two peregrines fly away early this morning. Every single bird in the park took off at the first cannon shot. I also found no owls
ReplyDeleteTheodore
The birds are not permanently disturbed by gun salutes, fortunately. These have been going on for centuries.
DeleteThe last Little Owl to be visible, at the Serpentine Gallery, is hellishly difficult to find. I expect to lose touch any day now. But we've had a good viewing season.