A soggy day

It was a day of wind and frequent rain, and it seemed likely that the Little Owl would be sheltering in her hole. So she was, but she obligingly came out and posed on the doorstep.

The widowed male Peregrine was on the barracks tower, looking damp and miserable.

The familiar Robin in the Flower Walk is tatty at the best of times, but when he's wet he looks awful. I do hope he's all right.

The male Great Tit in the Rose Garden followed me around, taking several pine nuts and perching decoratively in a bush full of rose hips.

The male Chaffinch must have been watching, as he was interested too. I threw him a pine nut which he tried to catch in midair, but failed. He'll have to practise to get as nimble as the one in Kensington Gardens.

This is an awful picture but mildly amusing. It's what happens when you're trying to photograph a Wren in the shrubbery but press the shutter button a hundredth of a second too late.

The Grey Wagtail was back at the Dell waterfall catching midges as they were washed over the edge. You can certainly see why it's called a wagtail.

Half a dozen Jackdaws chased me down the edge of the Serpentine asking politely for peanuts. Last month there weren't any here.

The Czech Black-Headed Gull, one of our regular winter visitors, was in its usual place on the No Swimming sign at Fisherman's Keep.

A young Herring Gull had found a dead carp washed up on the shore.

The young Grey Herons were together in the nest, looking sad and bedraggled in the drizzle.

The four Little Grebes were still on the Round Pond, diving like fury. They spend more time down than up, but I managed to catch three of them on the surface.

One of the Great Crested Grebe chicks on the Long Water came over to the Vista with its father. It's just beginning to get a little black crest.

The other was on the far side of the water in full cry after its mother.

Sad to say, the Coots nesting on the post at Peter Pan are down to their last chick. A parent brought it a little red worm-like thing which is actually the larva of a chironomid midge.

A squirrel in the Rose Garden chewed a strip of bark it had ripped off a branch. It's not alone in liking bark: geese do too, and so do deer which can completely ruin trees (but luckily there are none in this park).

A tree near the Rose Garden has produced these odd papery pods. It turns out to be a Goldenrain tree, Koelreuteria paniculata, named for its trails of yellow flowers and native to China. The park people have now stopped planting exotic trees and are sticking puristically to native species, a pity.

A brief sunny interval lit up the gilded absurdity of the Albert Memorial. The leaves are beginning to fall.