A quick visit to the park this morning, as I shall be going to Rainham Marshes in the afternoon and hope to have more pictures for you late this evening.
In the Rose Garden shrubbery, the male Blackbird found a fallen dogwood fruit and ate it himself.
The fledglings are still partly dependent on its parents, but need to be encouraged to look for their own food.
A young Blue Tit beside the Long Water was already busy hunting insects in a bush.
Mark Williams sent me a picture of a Carrion Crow eating a digestive biscuit in St James's Park, and said that the number of crows here has declined since the Covid reign of terror which imprisoned so many humans.
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For some reason this has not been the case in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, where the crows are still numerous and breeding happily. The young ones are still begging, though by now they are quite capable of feeding themselves.
The Little owlet at the Round Pond stared from the nest hole. It's used to being photographed now, however cross it may look.
When the Grey Heron chicks in the nest on the island stand up you can see that they are nearly adult size. They grow with fantastic speed on a high-protein diet of mashed fish.
One of the returning Black-Headed Gulls at Peter Pan was ringed by Bill Haines last year: Blue 2318.
This is a juvenile Black-Headed Gull, one of several on the gravel strip in the Round Pond.
A Great Crested Grebe on the Serpentine was just mooching around, but irresistibly elegant.
A thriving family of Coots in the safety of the Italian Garden fountain pools. Three families have grown up this year in this relatively safe place.
A view of the Coots' nest near the bridge, a fine sight with its leafy willow branch and traffic cone which I am sure the Coots appreciate, but sadly unproductive this year.
One of the two single Mute cygnets on the Serpentine hauled up algae. They are large enough to resist obvious dangers now, but still need to keep out of the way of the killer swan, now luckily busy with his cygnets on the Long Water.
Three Canada x Greylag Goose hybrids, which are certainly siblings, preened on the edge of the Serpentine. This is by far the commonest hybrid seen in the park, but they are sterile so they are always first-generation.
The Tufted drakes are going into eclipse and their smart white sides are fading.
Females look much the same.as they moult their flight feathers.
The long grass around the Queen's Temple is full of Silver Y moths, but they are very tricky to photograph as they settle at the bottom of clumps and there are always stems in the way.
But a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee might have wanted to pose for its picture as it climbed up a viper's bugloss flower at the back of the Lido.
Viper's Bugloss is apparently also known as Blueweed, Snake Flower and Blue Devil. Not at all clear what it has to do with snakes, devils or ox tongues.
ReplyDeleteApparently it contains alkaloids that give horses and cattle liver failure, popularly known as 'walking disease' and 'sleepy staggers'.
DeleteIt's called hierba viborera (viper's herb) and lengua de vaca (cow's tongue) in Spanish as well. There must be something to it.
DeleteThe Coots' nest is a real art installation. I mean, someone my enter it for next year's Turner prize and stand as much of a change of winning as anyone else.
Tinúviel
I was trying to see a cow's tongue in the shape of the flower, but couldn't manage it. The viper and devil references seem simply to be because it's poisonous. Popular plant names are always a source of wonder. The common wild plant Clematis vitalba is called both Old Man's Beard and Traveller's Joy. Its fluffy look explains the first, but the second is utterly obscure.
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