More insects than birds

Hot sunny days are not a good time for seeing small birds, and I only got pictures of a Coal Tit in the crabapple tree at Mount Gate ...

... a Robin on the railings in the Flower Walk ...

... and another Robin in the Rose Garden shrubbery.

Ahmet Amerikali found a Goldcrest in the big yew tree at the southeast corner of the Dell.

A Magpie climbed up the slate roof of a boathouse.

The female Little Owl at the Round Pond was preening in a horse chestnut tree.

The enterprising young Grey Heron was enjoying climbing around on the wire baskets surrounding the island.

But its timid sibling was still in the nest.

In the water below the three Great Crested Grebe chicks were together on their father's back -- it was a tricky business getting all three in view.

They soon jumped off, but then wanted to return. When they climb on to their parent they send it spinning round.

The Tufted ducklings at the Vista are now diving so frantically that it's almost impossible to count them.

I got just one still picture of them all on the surface, showing that there are still eight.

Is the Tufted Duck the only species that has all-brown ducklings?

A Pochard drake near the Lido was looking quite smart considering he is supposed to be in eclipse. But it's the gaudy ducks such as Mandarins and Mallards that change most.

There was a mob of carp mooching around in the algae in the southeast pool of the Italian Garden. There used to be perch in this pool but I haven't seen one for a long time, and maybe the carp have crowded them out.

The sunshine brought out plenty of insects, including a male Emperor flying over the algae at the north end of the Long Water.

I was puzzled by this dragonfly flying under the bridge, which looked like a female Emperor but had a brown thorax instead of green. Looking it up, I think it's a Lesser Emperor, Anax parthenope. Conehead 54 reckons it's a male: this species is less colourful than the larger Emperor.

As I was trying the photograph a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee and a Honeybee on the same globe thistle flower in the Rose Garden ...

... this silvery grey bee landed for a moment and I just got a couple of shots before it flew away. I thought it might be an Ashy Mining Bee, Andrena cineraria, but Duncan Campbell says its abdomen is too hairy and it looks like an abnormally pale Buff-Tailed Bumblebee. It did see it better than this hastily snatched picture shows, and it didn't have a trace of yellow, orange or brown anywhere. Later: Duncan has found a picture of a male Buff-Tailed Bumblebee just as colourless as the one here on Steven Falk's Flickr page. You'll have to scroll down a short way to see it.