Young Pied Wagtail

There was a young Pied Wagtail at the edge of the Lido restaurant terrace.

This is probably its father hunting just along the shore.

At the northwest corner of the bridge a large brood of Great Tit fledglings fluttered their wings and called frantically to be fed. In the middle of the chaos a young Robin perched quietly on a twig.

Another young Robin stared gravely from the Dell.

A female Great Spotted Woodpecker called from an oak behind the Albert Memorial.

As I arrived at the Round Pond the male Little Owl flew over and landed on his usual perch in the lime tree.

This Feral Pigeon retains the pattern of the original Rock Dove with two wing bars but is faded to brown. Like most birds, pigeons have two kinds of melanin pigment, eumelanin which is black and phaeomelanin which is ginger. This colour scheme is caused by a lack of eumelanin.

The Coot nesting on the chain at the bridge had restored things to normal by rolling the eggs up into the middle of the nest so they could be properly sat on. Its mate had brought it a pair of sunglasses.

A Moorhen washed, flapped and preened in the reeds under the Italian Garden fountains.

The Mute Swans on the Long Water have lost a cygnet and are down to six.

The pair at the Lido restaurant have also lost one and have two left.

There are two at the landing stage, the same number as yesterday, but I am told that there were four originally.

I was wrong about it being one of the Canada goslings that was limping. It was the youngest Greylag. Today it was walking normally but probably its leg is still a bit painful, because when it had found a good tuft of grass it sat down to feed.

The gang of five Mallard teenagers were at the Vista eating the leaves on a bush. You can just see the fifth one at top left.

The clumps of Stachys in the Rose Garden were thronged with Buff-Tailed Bumblebees.

A patch of Salvia (one of the many kinds in the park) was also full of bumblebees. Conehead 54 reckons that this is an Early Bumblebee, though its characteristic red 'tail' is out of the picture...

... and that this is a Vestal Cuckoo Bee. I'm sure that continued snapping would have produced half a dozen other species from the hundreds of bees in the garden.

A rather tattered Red Admiral butterfly rested on the lawn by the Albert Memorial.