I went back to the Round Pond at sunset to investigate the Little Owls. They become active at this time, waiting for the park to close and the people to go away so that they can hunt on the ground. My smaller camera has a low light setting, though the results are none too sharp.
The male owl was in the same horse chestnut ...
... and an owlet was out on a branch.
But there was a good deal of toing and froing around the nest tree, and I am fairly sure that there are two owlets. However, all the following video is of the owlet in the previous still picture.
Its father brought it something to eat -- maybe a caterpillar, beetle or worm. Sorry that the video is a bit shaky: the AI stabiliser routine doesn't work on this kind of footage.
A Little owlet has come out of the nest hole at the Round Pond. I could only find one in this horse chestnut tree.
Here it is calling and preening.
Its father was in the same tree keeping an eye on it.
It was a warm sunny day and a Blackbird was sunbathing in a flower bed in the Rose Garden.
A Magpie looked down from a red-leafed cherry tree at the northwest corner of the bridge.
A family of Greenfinches were bouncing about in the holly tree north of Peter Pan. I only got a picture of the male.
There was another family with chasing fledglings in a tree on the other side of the Long Water. I thought it was the local family of Blackcaps, and indeed this seems to be a Blackcap fledgling.
When I photographed this bird in the same place I thought it was an adult female Blackcap. But it has too much of an eye stripe and looks like a warbler that has got mixed up in the general confusion. Later: The general opinion seems to be that it's a Chiffchaff.
Another puzzle with a bird family, this time Long-Tailed Tits in the Dell. This isn't a good photograph but it's clearly a young bird pulling something held in its spare foot to pieces. The thing doesn't look like any kind of larva I can think of.
The young Grey Heron from the second nest on the island was looking for small fish lurking under the concrete edge of the Serpentine and got two.
A Coot with chicks in a fountain pool in the Italian Garden had a faceoff with a heron that had landed on a planter and could easily have grabbed one of the chicks if it strayed too close. The heron yielded and flew off.
I was filming two pairs of Great Crested Grebes having a territorial dispute on the Serpentine when a saxophone and guitar duo started up on a bench behind me. Honestly I didn't dub a sound track on to this video -- you know I'd never do that.
The two pairs of Mute Swans with single cygnets on the Serpentine are guarding them carefully.
A Black-Tailed Skimmer dragonfly perched on a bramble at the southwest corner of the bridge. I think this is an immature male that has not yet got much of the powdery blue 'pruination' that it will get later, but I may well be wrong.
A male Common Blue Damselfly sunned itself on the railings at Peter Pan.
The electric charging stations at the boathouse on the Serpentine aren't for electric outboard motors for the powerboats as I had hoped (because that would have slowed the staff down from zooming about the lake at reckless speeds with 50 horsepower petrol outboards and raising a huge damaging wash). They're for ten new electric boats for hire.
These look like pedalos and may well be driven by a central paddle, though the extreme inefficiency of this method of propulsion would make for a terrible waste of electricity. This seems a missed opportunity. The new boat people ordered far too many rowing boats when they started, and twenty of these are moored and mouldering unused in the middle of the lake. If they wanted electric boats they could have bought some low-powered electric outboards with propeller guards and fitted them to the rowing boats, saving a lot of money. But the park management always think in terms of flashy new stuff and not of making use of what they have.
The young Grey Heron from the second nest perched on the handrail of the stairs at the bridge. This place belongs to an older heron which saw it flying in and hurried to attack it. The younger heron lost and had to go down to a less interesting place on the path below.
More peacefully, a heron sunbathed on the roof of a boathouse.
Another was fishing under the marble fountain on the edge of the Italian Garden (though you wouldn't know it was fine Carrara marble under all the algae, something the sculptor hadn't bargained for).
A view across the garden, with Portland stone ram-headed urns along the balustrade. The male Egyptian Goose idled on an urn. His mate is nesting an a tree nearby.
The four younger Egyptian goslings were under the bridge. One hurried to catch up with the others.
But they aren't the youngest any more. A pair on the north shore of the Serpentine have brought out ten new goslings.
A Greylag Goose ate the potted plants at the Dell restaurant. It liked an ornamental red sedge, Carex punicea, which is a native of New Zealand.
The Black Swan was at the other end of the restaurant terrace, alone and looking melancholy. It seems that he doesn't know about St James's Park, just five minutes away by air, where he would have the company of his own kind including an unattached female who might be pleased to see him.
A Coot enjoyed a wash and a preen and a scratch.
The single Great Crested Grebe chick on the Long Water was also preening, in the intervals of pestering its parents.
A few Swifts hunted over the Round Pond.
The male Little Owl was in exactly the same place as yesterday. The owlets in the dead tree could be heard hissing faintly.
While I was looking unsuccessfully for an owl at the Serpentine Gallery the usual male Chaffinch arrived and landed on the wood chips under the old chestnut tree.
A Starling in the Flower Walk shone in the sunlight.
A female Black-Tailed Skimmer dragonfly rested on a sisyrhynchium in the Rose Garden.
A Common Carder bee worked over a patch of red clover behind the Lido ...
... and the eryngium clump, now in full spiky flower, was busy with Honeybees.
There are definitely owlets in the Little Owls' nest tree at the Round Pond. They aren't visible at the moment but you can hear them in a sound recording I made.
The male owl was overlooking the nest tree from an obscure position in a horse chestnut tree. As I was trying to get a reasonable photograph someone came past the nest tree with a dog, which infuriated him though the owlets were perfectly safe inside the tree. He flew to the front of the tree and started yelling at it, which allowed me to get a better picture though it was sad to see him disturbed.
He takes no notice of me near the nest tree, as we've known each other for years.
I couldn't find an owl at the Serpentine Gallery, though I'm sure there was at least one looking down at me. A Blackbird foraged in the grass below.
A young Long-Tailed Tit perched on a branch at the northwest corner of the bridge, one of several from the family here.
There were more in the Dell ...
... with adults ...
... Great Tits, Blue Tits and a young Robin.
Their attention was focused on a small and tatty cedar tree. Evidently it's full of insects and, to judge by its half dead condition, there are larvae feeding on the needles.
It was quite a warm day and a Magpie under the Henry Moore sculpture was feeling the heat.
Ahmet Amerikali got another picture of one of the Reed Warblers at the southwest corner of the bridge.
They are still singing occasionally, and I could hear young birds calling in the Diana fountain reed bed.
At the Dell restaurant Pigeon Eater had struck again and was tearing at his prey in the water, which was slightly tricky for him as it recoiled when pecked and he had to jump at it. His mate waited patiently nearby for him to finish and give her a share.
The latest Grey Heron chicks on the island aren't often visible, but today they put in an appearance. They're noticeably larger than when last seen on 10 June, eight days ago.
The Great Crested Grebe pair were still hanging around the willow near the bridge.
This young Moorhen is always near the island with its mother. They get a hard time from the Coots but refuse to be driven away.
The six Mute cygnets on the Long Water, seen here below the Italian Garden fountains with their mother, are growing fast on a diet of algae reinforced with all the snails and small water creatures they can find to provide extra protein.
The pair of Canada Geese with three goslings moved along the edge of the shrubbery at the Triangle sampling various plants. This is not without risk: a couple of years ago a brood of Egyptian goslings ate a poisonous plant and all died within minutes. I was never able to find out what it was.
Sunshine brought out the young foxes in the Dell.
I could still only find Buff-Tailed Bumblebees and Honeybees in the Rose Garden. There must be other bees but I couldn't find any, not even Common Carders of which there are usually plenty. The bees only go for wild-type single roses as they can't get into the big double flowers beloved by gardeners. I much prefer the single kind.
The female Little Owl at the Round Pond was seen moving around in the hole at the back of the nest tree, a good sign as it means the intruding squirrels have gone. When I arrived she had gone out of sight, but I did find her mate well hidden in a horse chestnut tree.
The day before yesterday I heard what might have been the hissing of owlets here, but I was too far away to be sure and I haven't heard them since. Anyway, it's clear that things are happening here.
Also at the Round Pond, two young Pied Wagtails were running around on the noxious surface of the gravel strip.
A Blue Tit looked down regally from a magnolia leaf in the Flower Walk.
The older Great Tit fledglings are begging less and hunting more as they grow up. This is one of the more recent ones, still completely dependent on its parents.
Two Carrion Crows enjoyed a brawl.
The Great Crested Grebe pair at the bridge had a leisurely preen ...
... and went back to sleep comfortably together.
The Coot was gone from the nest site, so they should be free to move in. There's no hurry: the later they nest the more small fish there will be for the chicks.
The Coots under the parapet of the Italian Garden have built a second nest for themselves and their three chicks, one of which can be seen here. I don't think these extra nests serve any real purpose, it just is that Coots can't stop building.
The Mute Swans had parked their cygnets on the nesting island.
The longer they stay here, the better for the two single cygnets on the Serpentine.
The single Greylag gosling on the Serpentine is noticeably younger than the two from the other pair, but it has probably turned the corner and is likely to survive.
Nevertheless, what a sad showing we have had this year: three Greylags and four Canadas. As usual, the Egyptians have done quite well simply by being fantastically prolific.
Four Red Crested Pochard drakes rested on the gravel strip on the Long Water ...
... and there were two Mandarins. The one on the left seems to be female, with a grey bill, but it's hard to be sure at this distance.
Large carp swam around the Serpentine outflow. The biggest was about 2ft 6in (75 cm) long. There are considerably bigger fish farther out in the lake.
At last the dragonflies are beginning to pick up. I saw two male Emperors over the Long Water but they didn't provide a photo opportunity. And there were three male Black-Tailed Skimmers. This one was at Peter Pan. They like to rest on the gravel rolled into the tarmac, which makes a poor background.
There were some more interesting insects. A Potato Capsid bug, Closterotomus norvegicus, rested on an oxeye daisy in the Rose Garden ...
... and this ground beetle, I think Harpalus affinis, was literally beetling over the ground by the Henry Moore sculpture, so I couldn't get a good picture of it.
%202024%201a.jpg)
