Swallows

Swallows were flying over the Long Water.

They're a bit late this year. For example, they were seen here on 19 April in 2016. Regular readers of this blog will know that we now have to have the traditional picture of the famous 'Swallow Vase'.

A Greek pelike (storage jar) of about 510 BC, now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, it shows three people looking at the first swallow of spring. Inscriptions too faint to show in the photograph, and written in the peculiar spelling of the Athenian dialect, say:

ΙΔΟ ΧΕΛΙΔΟΝ / ΝΕ ΤΟΝ ΗΕΡΑΚΛΕΑ / ΗΑΥΤΕΙ / ΕΑΡ ΕΔΕ

Look, a swallow / Yes, by Herakles / There it is / Spring already!

The Robins at Mount Gate were together in the shrubbery, eating pine nuts as if they were going out of fashion.

The Coal Tit also came out several times. They can take pine nuts in quick succession because they don't eat them on the spot, they stash them in cracks in bark to eat later.

The Blackbirds in the Dell were making a loud fuss about a Magpie which had come too close to their nest.

This Grey Heron in the latest nest at the east end of the Serpentine island is certainly sitting on eggs. They don't go into that flat attitude for any other reason.

Pigeon Eater hasn't been in his usual place at the Dell restaurant for a while, but today he was back with his mate, looking disapprovingly at a Greylag Goose.

Coots nest every year on the plastic buoys surrounding the swimming area at the Lido. They never succeed in this exposed place, but the Coots keep doggedly on year by year.

The planters in the Italian Garden provide a much safer site, and there are three Coot nests there at present. The last one, invisible among the irises, hasn't hatched yet. The five eldest chicks were in their nest, growing well but still being fed by their parents.

While six of the seven chicks from the second nest were chasing their parents around the pool, one stood on the old nest used by the family last year.

The Black Swan was alone on the Serpentine. Yesterday I saw him following a swan that was probably his old girlfriend, but she took no notice of him. Jorgen tells me that he was dumped because a male Mute Swan butted in and took her over.

The swan nesting at the Lido restaurant was being guarded by her mate. They have brought some remarkably large bits of branch to the nest.

The Egyptian Geese at the boathouse were keeping their seven assorted goslings together. The difference in size between the two large ones and the five smaller ones is very noticeable.

The single gosling was at the Lido with its parents, eating algae off the buoys.

A Tufted drake dived at the edge. He has to keep paddling downwards at an angle to stay submerged.

The Mandarin drakes were at the Triangle, a few yards apart. We might as well have pictures of both of them while their fine feathers last. They will look sad and tatty soon enough.

Joan Chatterley was at Walthamstow Wetlands, where she got a fine picture of a Black-Necked Grebe in its strange but magnificent breeding plumage.