Singing and scolding

A Wren sang on a dead branch in the Flower Walk. With his powerful voice he could be easily heard over the noisy humans below. It's almost impossible to get a quiet moment to record, with people chattering and pulling noisy suitcases on wheels while jets go over to Heathrow and police cars pass with their sirens on.

Another Wren was in a bush below, maybe a mate of his. Wrens are polygamous, with the male lording it over a harem of females in separate nests.

I did slightly better with a Blackbird in the next tree alternately preening and singing a phrase. There was no rival within earshot, so he had no need to sing seriously.

Loud whirring near Peter Pan disclosed a pair of Song Thrushes protesting at several Jays that had got too close to their nest in the bushes.

There were more Jays near the Serpentine Gallery.

The Little Owl at the Round Pond looked down through horse chestnut leaves.

Pigeon Eater and his mate, on their territory near the Dell restaurant, had a small display together, nodding upwards as a sign of affection.

The pair of Great Crested Grebes at the east end of the Serpentine were looking at the reed bed as if planning to nest on the edge. A pair of grebes did manage to build here successfully a few years ago, fixing a nest to the outside of the net where it somehow managed to escape being demolished by carelessly steered pedalos. The net only goes down to water level, but it has bever occurred to the grebes to dive under it and nest in the safety of the reeds behind. To be fair, this has never occurred to Coots either.

Coots nest in one of the small boathouses every year. Only one chick was vsisible, being fed in the debris at the edge of the lake, but there were probably more inside.

The Coot chicks from the nest south of Peter Pan were out under the bushes ...

... but the pair nesting on the post have lost their chicks to the gulls already, as they do every year.

There are two pairs in the Italian Garden, so confrontations are inevitable.

A pile of straw was put on the Serpentine shore for a pair of Mute Swans to make a comfortable nest in the reed bed east of the Lido, and a temporary fence put up to shield the place from dogs. But the original swans here, 4GIA and 4DTI, seem to have been ousted by another pair, 4FUE and 4FYY of which the first is the male. He hasn't grasped the idea that the straw is to go in the reeds, and was pushing it around as if he were planning to make a nest on this open spot -- which would not be a good idea, even with the fence in place.

A yellow rose in the Rose Garden attracted what I am pretty sure is an Orange-Tailed Mining Bee, Andrena haemorrhoa.

A Speckled Wood butterfly perched on a leaf by the Serpentine Lodge. It's badly tattered. They are very territorial and fight like fury.

The Wollemi Pine, Wollemia nobilis, in the Dell is now well established and putting out new leaves. A previous one here died. The genus was known only from roughgly similar fossils and thought to be long extinct, but in 1994 living trees were discovered in New South Wales. They were cloned, and the clones distributed to botanic gardens around the world. It has since been discovered that they can be grown from seed.

Another 'living fossil' is the Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, of which there are now two in the Dell and one across the path by the Serpentine outflow. Thought extinct since the Cretaceous, it was discovered in central China in 1941, so the trees in the west have had time to grow to a good height. Eventually they will be enormous: a fossil has been discovered with a trunk 26 ft (8 m) in diameter at the base.