The leaping Coot

A Robin at Mount Gate exchanged phrases with a Great Tit ...

... which was looking out of a forsythia bush hoping to be fed. Both came to my hand.

One of the Coal Tit pair was also here, and collected several pine nuts from the ground.

A pair of Long-Tailed Tits are nesting in brambles near the Italian Garden.

This one was in the big yew tree at the southeast corner of the Dell, and no doubt there's a nest in the bushes.

The familiar Robin in the Rose Garden shrubbery now has a mate, and with luck we should see some young ones in due course.

There's extensive flooding in Kensington Gardens after yesterday's rain. A Blackbird, apparently forced off its usual territory, turned up under a tree north of the Flower Walk and quickly found a worm. Sorry for the bad photograph, but it captures the moment.

The Peregrines were flying over the Serpentine. The male returned to the tower, evidently with a pigeon though I didn't see him arrive. He put it behind the edge and you could only see his tail, but looked up for a moment before he settled down to demolishing it.

A Pied Wagtail hunting midges over the Serpentine used the white plastic buoys around the swimming area as a station.

The Grey Heron at the bridge turns up on the handrail of the stairs whenever it sees anyone on the bench halfway up, and stares at them. It probably gets a lot of food by this begging method.

There are more herons at the island beyond the three nesting pairs, and it's now hard to tell which is which.

The female Great Crested Grebe of the Long Water pair poked around a temporarily unoccupied Coot nest looking for fish lurking among the submerged twigs.

A Coot in the Italian Garden gathering withered iris leaves from a planter for its nest had considerable difficulty jumping over the rail, but it finally managed and delivered them to its mate on the nest.

The Black Swan and his girlfriend joined a group being fed, but had a confrontation with a dominant Mute Swan. This swan is not the killer. He has the ring 4FUK and I've seen him bullying the other swans before now. He and the male from the island, 4FYG, are second and third in the hierarchy, not necessarily in that order.

The Black Swan lost the faceoff and retreated. He had a flap to soothe his ruffled feelings.

The pair of Egyptian Geese in the Italian Garden were together again. Evidently their attempt at nesting has failed. They looked depressed. This is the second failure on the Long Water this year, after the pair at the Henry Moore sculpture.