Rat for lunch

At the Serpentine island a Grey Heron was holding something in the water. It had caught a rat and was drowning it. Another heron arrived and there was a brisk tug of war, which ended up with the heron that had caught the rat flying away with it.

This was one of the parents of the two young herons in the nest. It flew up and landed above the nest -- you can just see it in this picture -- while the young ones got madly excited.

I couldn't see which of them got the rat, since just after I took this picture the parent moved in front of them.

But, judging by the body language after the action was over, it was the one on the right.

The heron that begs at the Lido restaurant has taken to standing on the umbrellas so that it has a good vantage point for raiding the leftovers on an empty table.

It hasn't yet got to the stage of jumping on to occupied tables and snatching things. But if it does it will surely suffer the fate of the heron that started doing this at the Dell restaurant a few years ago, which disappeared one day and I fear came to a bad end.

The female Little Owl at the Round Pond was in her usual place in the lime tree. She perches higher and farther inside the leaves than the male does when he uses this tree, which makes her harder to photograph.

I was told that the owlet had flown off to a distant tree, and couldn't find it. So I came back later and it had returned to the nest tree.

The gravel strip that was installed in the Round Pond as a refuge for waterfowl has proved very popular, but the smell on a warmish day is indescribable, especially if it has been raining earlier.

The colony of Jackdaws that used to be on the south side of the Round Pond has gone, perhaps driven away by Carrions Crows, and I don't know where they've moved to. I found this Jackdaw near the Lido, one of the regulars who expected a peanut, and there was one more near the Speke obelisk but that was all.

The Blackcaps in the park are still singing in mid-July after most of the other songbirds have fallen silent. This one was also near the obelisk.

A Reed Warbler under the Italian Garden had caught an unfortunate Marmalade Fly.

A surprising head-on confrontation with a Meadow Brown butterfly near the Queen's Temple.

A Large White butterfly fed on a verbena flower in the Rose Garden.

A Buff-Tailed Bumblebee worked over an eryngium flower at the back of the Lido. In case you're thinking of an ordinary eryngium, so that the bee would be the size of a Wren, it's a miniature variety and the bee is no larger than usual.