The Little Owl at the Round Pond had found yet another place in her horse chestnut tree, where she could only be seen by looking almost straight up.
The Hobbies could be heard and distantly seen some way to the north, but there was no chance of a picture.
Long-Tailed Tits were working through the insect-ravaged box tree by the bridge, probably capturing the Box Tree Moths which as larvae had mostly killed it.
A Robin in a flower bed in the Flower Walk came out to take pine nuts thrown on the ground.
The dominant Robin by the Queen's Gate crossing and his presumed mate both came to my hand from opposite sides of the path within a minute of each other. I can't feed them and photograph them at the same time.
There is a yew hedge here and a Blackbird was under it making a fuss about something.
A Grey Wagtail hunted for insects around the pool at the top of the Dell waterfall.
Mark Williams sent a pleasing picture of two Starlings on the trolleys of his local Aldi supermarket planning a raid.
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A Grey Heron muttered to itself and preened at the top of a small lime tree beside the Serpentine.
One of the Great Crested Grebe chicks was pestering its father on one side of the boathouse.
On the other side the other chick was busy fishing by itself. I didn't see it catching anything, but it's good that it's showing enterprise so early.
The father of the chicks on the Long Water was fishing at the Vista ...
... while the chicks waited on the far side.
The Coot chicks from the nest on the Long Water under the edge of the Italian Garden were already out on the water and being fed by their parents.
A pair of Gadwalls browsed under a chain at Peter Pan.
The chains date from a time when boats were allowed on to the Long Water, and were meant to stop people from going beyond Peter Pan or landing there. Now the barrier is at the bridge.
Large carp clustered around the Serpentine outflow. Some of the carp in the lake weigh more than 40 pounds. They can live for over 40 years, growing larger the whole time.
These are probably in the same place as the first carp to be brought to Britain, when monks imported them from mainland Europe in the mid-1300s to stock fishponds for their Friday meals. At this time the area was the Manor of Hyde, farmland belonging to the monks of Westminster Abbey. Old maps from before the time the Serpentine was created show fishponds in the Westbourne river exactly where this picture was taken.
A Migrant Hawker dragonfly perched on a clump of blackberries at the Vista.
Two Red Admiral butterflies were chasing each other in the Rose Garden shrubbery.
A clump of Michaelmas daisies attracted hoverflies. This is a Tapered Dronefly, Eristalis pertinax. (Another less good photograph showed that it didn't have a black stripe on its face, which is how you tell it from the Common Dronefly E. tenax.)
An apple with one bite out of it left on a table at the Lido restaurant promptly attracted the attention of a bunch of Common Wasps.
I don't know who are more addicted to sugar, humans, or wasps. It's astounding. They don't even have the saving grace of making honey out of it.
ReplyDeleteFirst things first, and keeping up the friendship with Mr and Mrs Robin is far more important than getting them to pose for their pictures!
Tinúviel
I suppose wasps detect a fruity or sugary scent and fly upwind. They seem to be able to pick it up from a good distance, as picnickers will know.
DeleteWith Great Tits, which are calm birds, you can set the little camera to autofocus on a short distance and point it at your left hand holding the food. Robins are suspicious of this arrangement, so really you need to have someone else photographing you.
Hoverfly pic seems to be missing. And always a pleasure to tune in. Jim
ReplyDeleteThanks. That's the second time in a month that pictures have dropped out after being put in. Well, at least they're staying in the right place in the text, which used to be a much more vexing problem till recently. Blogger really wasn't designed to carry text with this number of illustrations.
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