Singing in the rain

A Song Thrush beside the Long Water ignored today's rain and sang cheerfully in a holly tree.

They are usually shy birds, but this one at the tennis courts in Hyde Park was busy with a worm and stood its ground while Duncan Campbell filmed it yesterday.

A young Starling at Mount Gate was looking bedraggled ...

... while an adult splashed happily in a puddle.

Movement in the reeds under the Italian Garden set me looking for a Reed Warbler, but it turned out to be a couple of Blue Tits looking for insects.

A damp Carrion Crow perched on the balustrade hoping for a peanut, which of course it got.

The young Grey Herons on the island were back in their tree, with one in the nest while the other climbed in the branches.

It's not clear what has happened with the Mute Swans that were nesting at the Serpentine outflow and had at least one cygnet. Yesterday Mike Harris sent an ominous picture of one of the teenage foxes from the Dell eyeing them.

Today the nest was deserted and there was no sign of eggs, whole or broken. I talked to Andrea, the Dell gardener, who takes a keen interest in the wildlife on her patch. She had found no sign of trouble either in the Dell or at the nest site, but hadn't seen the swans either. The most likely explanation is that any cygnets died for one reason or another, and the swans have gone back to join the others on the lake.

A typical picture of the on-off relationship of the Black Swan with his Mute girlfriend; he was gazing wistfully at her as she took no notice of him.

The swans with seven cygnets on the Long Water must have thought it wasn't raining hard enough, so they went under the waterspouts on the edge of the Italian Garden.

An Egyptian Goose in the Italian Garden had the same idea and took a shower in the marble fountain.

There are seven Egyptian goslings on the Round Pond. There were no other Egyptians when I was there, which is good as their parents won't get into one of their silly territorial fights and leave them exposed to raiding gulls.

The four ill-matched goslings on the Serpentine are growing up and the difference in size between the older and younger two is beginning to lessen.

There are also two new ones, which had been browsing on the horse ride. Their parents had seen a dog approaching and were hurrying them across the road to the edge of the lake.

After the dog had gone, the Canadas with three goslings returned to the ride. This is the most successful Canada family in what has been a very bad year for them.

The Mallard drake in the Dell had flown to the Rose Garden and was swimming in the fountain. His mate trotted over the lawn to join him.

You wouldn't have expected to see a bee out in the rain, but this Buff-Tailed Bumblebee was keeping dry on a Stachys byzantina by sheltering under one of its big woolly leaves while it browsed on the flowers on the stem.

An interesting picture from Duncan Campbell, also from near the tennis courts. Web-spinning caterillars have completely enclosed a small tree and were eating all the leaves inside the web. Often their attack kills the tree. To identify them you need to know the species of the tree, which is probably undiscoverable now. But when this happened to a large bush beside the Serpentine a few years ago the culprit was an Ermine Micromoth, a group of insects that includes many species.