Little owlet found again

I went up to the Round Pond yesterday evening to try to find the Little owlet or owlets, without success. When the male saw me he flew away to draw me off, and I followed him and got a picture of him lit by the last rays of the setting sun.

This morning he wasn't bothered, and looked down calmly from his usual place in the lime tree ...

... and an owlet could be seen in the top of a horse chestnut. So far there's no hard evidence that there is more than one.

A Coal Tit in the Flower Walk is now a regular customer. Here it is waiting patiently in the corkscrew hazel for me to finish photographing and give it a pine nut.

A family of Blue Tits were milling around in a dead tree near the Steiner bench. Dead trees seem to be just as good a source of insects as living ones.

Every time I go past the gas lamp post at the back of the Triangle shrubbery, the same Magpie is on it waiting for a peanut, and swoops down to the road to collect it.

A Jay near the Queen's Temple couldn't take a peanut from the ground because several hungry Carrion Crows were waiting to pounce, but it remembered that it could grab one from my hand and glided down gracefully. I'm sure they enjoy this display of precision flying as much as the peanut they get.

For some time there have been sounds of young Reed Warblers in the reed bed by the Diana fountain, but it's very hard to see anything there as spreading reeds growing on land in front of the bed obscure it. However, Ahmet Amerikali managed to get a picture of one, less wary than an adult because it's young and naive.

He found another young Reed Warbler in the reeds under the Italian Garden.

The single Great Crested Grebe chick dozed beside its father at the island, squeaking very faintly to indicate that it would like to be fed some time soon. When the adult woke up, so did the chick and set off in loud pursuit.

The young Coots at Peter Pan are now independent, and three of the four were feeding and playing in the middle of the lake.

This left an adult with nothing to do, so it added more twigs to its already large nest.

One of the two single Mute cygnets on the Serpentine was wandering around the grass, which was covered with picnickers. At least it had its mother to look after it.

A swan investigated an orange but found nothing to interest it.

Two Greylag Geese on the Serpentine splashed and preened and flapped. Their flight feathers are regrowing, which must be itchy and uncomfortable and makes them restless.

The oldest of the Egyptian goslings slightly opened its wings, showing full developed primaries. It will be running along trying to fly soon, always an entertaining sight.

The long grass between the Round Pond and the Queen's Temple is full of small grass moths, which I think are Chrysoteuchia culmella.

The park's fleet of ice cream vans has a new addition, a handsome Bedford van of the early 1930s.

The classic vans, which include a 1950s Commer and small Morris Commercial van, are well restored and then unfortunately passed into the numb hands of the staff who don't take care of them. The pride of the fleet, a Rolls-Royce, was no sooner delivered than some idiot smashed the front in, and several years later it hasn't been repaired and is a sad sight. As you can see with the Bedford, they aren't even bothering to keep the tyres inflated.