A bit of sunshine

A winter view up the Long Water from the bridge during a spell of mild sunshine.

The nesting Grey Heron on the Serpentine island stood up to turn over the eggs.

Its mate was waiting in the next tree to take over incubation duties.

A Robin sang on a climbing rose on a pergola in the Rose Garden.

A Great Tit perched among the brown leaves of a young oak tree by the Speke obelisk ...

... and a Blue Tit bustled about twigs looking for larvae.

The male Chaffinch at Mount Gate was waiting on the railings to be fed.

The gate is named after the 'Prospect Mount', a 40 ft high artificial hill installed by the garden planner Charles Bridgeman when he remodelled what were then the private gardens of Kensington Palace around 1730. It provided a view of the park, but was pulled down at the end of the century when growing trees blocked the view. Hummocks in the ground between the gate and the Albert Memorial mark its remains. At the moment these are covered with snowdrops.

There was no sign of the Little Owl at the Round Pond. A pair of Jackdaws stood on the dead tree.

The pair of Rose-Ringed Parakeets we saw on a nearby tree a few days ago were still close together. Although these subtropical birds have evolved to survive an English winter, they still have a hard time and spend the cold nights huddled in a tree hole.

A Carrion Crow bathed in the Serpentine. These conservative birds almost always bathe in exactly the same place east of the boat hire platform.

The Magpie pair at the Steiner bench by the Long Water perched on the stump of a Lombardy poplar that blew down in a gale a couple of years ago.

The fountains in the Italian Garden have broken down yet again. A Coot examined one of the spray heads.

Two of the young Moorhens searched for something edible on the top. A surfacing Tufted Duck caused mild surprise. (You can hear a fountain in the background. The marble fountain on the edge is on a different system, supplying water to the lake from a borehole.)

The Black Swan was at the east end of the Serpentine with his girlfriend. Paul saw the two flying together, so it really does seem that she is fond of him and followed him down from the Round Pond.

There are quite a few Shovellers on the Round Pond, for some reason only here and not on the main lake. A Pied Wagtail ran past them up the edge.

Shovellers are usually shy and you can't get close to them, but there were so many people walking around the edge of the pond that this female had started ignoring them and it was possible to walk right up and film her as she fed at the edge.