A bit of a breeze

It was a moderately windy day. Carried away by today's safety culture, the park staff have taken to closing the Flower Walk on such days, though the trees are no more likely to be blown over here than they are anywhere else in the park that remains open. So I missed the faithful Robin and various tits, and the only picture of a small bird I got was a poor shot of a Long-Tailed Tit in the clump of trees north of the Henry Moore sculpture.

A Carrion Crow was here too, in the dead hawthorn. It was chewing the twigs for some reason. The lichen-covered twigs do harbour small insects and larvae.

There are a lot of plantains along the edge of a path, and a Feral Pigeon was eating the seeds off an upright stem. Plantains are now being touted as a human health food. In both cases I'm talking about the common small British plant called a plantain, not the big starchy West Indian cooking banana which is a completely different species.

The female Little Owl at the Round Pond was on the low sheltered branch where she goes when it's windy or drizzling.

There was just one Peregrine on the tower, and it turned out to be one of the young ones.

An anonymous commenter on yesterday's blog post mentions seeing four Hobbies in Kensington Gardens. Evidently they nested outside the park, probably in a quiet garden square in Kensington or Bayswater, and are coming in to hunt. I've only seen two myself.

Two juvenile Herring Gulls were chasing an adult over the Dell restaurant roof, begging loudly.

The commotion disturbed Pigeon Eater, but three was too many for him to chase so he walked away.

The feeble young Grey Heron was clacking at an adult, presumably a parent, in the other nest above. I saw both the young ones together in the nest the day before yesterday, so it seems they're both still being fed, but the moment of truth is rapidly approaching. And if it won't help itself, sadly there's nothing we can do.

The other young heron was fishing on the edge of the island. It may not be good at it yet but every day adds to its skill.

There are lots of small fish, mostly carp, swimming just under the surface of the lake, and a Great Crested Grebe was looking for them. The water was rough because of the wind, but that makes no difference to the behaviour of the fish.

The Coot nesting in the Italian Garden was turning the eggs, and you could see that there are five of them.

In the lake below a Moorhen was probing the algae, evidently looking for insect larvae. Presumably they eat some algae too, which are very nutritious and are the main food of the Mute Swans.

Another land drain at the bottom of the long slope of the Vista has failed, and ground water is pouring into the lake at a great rate. The turbulence interested the local Mallards and Gadwalls, probably because it was raising small edible creatures.

Five Red-Crested Pochard drakes sheltered in the lee of the Serpentine island.

The single cygnet on the Serpentine was mooching around by itself. I haven't seen it with its mother for a long time. It must be a culturally deprived young swan with no playmates. Meanwhile on the Long Water the killer swan's six cygnets are having a merry time pushing each other around and learning from their father how to be horrible.

In the Rose Garden a flowering cardoon, halfway between a thistle and a globe artichoke, attracted a crowd of bumblebees, most of them Buff-Tailed which is the commonest kind in the park. Cardoons are edible for humans and are used in Persian cuisine.

However, the sketchy and broken second stripe on this one shows that it's a Vestal Cuckoo Bee, a parasite of Buff-Tails.