The cygnets come out on the Long Water

The Mute Swans on the Long Water have seven cygnets. I could only see a few of them them on the nesting island, but Ahmet Amerikali found them out on the water with six of the cygnets showing as they clustsered round their mother.

Coot chicks in the Italian Garden stood on a roll of straw put into the fountain in a vain attempt to keep down algae. All eight are still there and now growing fast.

On the Long Water, a more dangerous place, only four chicks are left from the nest south of Peter Pan. Ahmet photographed the pushiest chick being roughly hauled out of the way by a parent so that the other two could be fed.

Four more Great Crested Grebes have flown in to the Serpentine. You can tell they're newly arrived because they're sitting peacefully together and not claiming territory.

Pigeon Eater was striding around his domain. The Feral Pigeons were giving him a wide berth. He does still catch pigeons here, presumably the young and inexperienced ones which have recently flown in and don't know how dangerous he is. But he is having to do more and more of his hunting elsewhere now.

The male Little Owl at the Round Pond looked down from a branch of the lime tree. He was calling to his mate, who was out of sight.

The very vocal Blackbird in the Rose Garden was singing on a plane branch.

Chiffchaffs like high places to sing. This one was in the top of a dead tree near the Hudson Memorial.

Starlings are nesting in the small plane trees by the boathouses. The chicks aren't yet big enough to start looking out of the hole, but there was a partial glimpse of one as an adult flew out.

A bird was flitting about in the reeds below the Italian Garden and I thought it was one of the Reed Warblers, but it turned out to be a Blue Tit.

There was a report that the Long-Tailed Tits in the Rose Garden had brought out their chicks, but I couldn't find any. An adult was looking for insects in the pink-flowered hawthorn.

The male Robin was in the bush below next to where his mate is nesting.

A Robin by the Henry Moore sculpture paused on the railings before flying out to hunt for the chicks.

A Song Thrush behind the Queen's Temple, bringing a worm to its nest, was wonderfully well camouflaged in the undergrowth.

A Jay in the Flower Walk wanted a peanut ...

... but a Carrion Crow at Fisherman's Keep had something much better, part of a ham sandwich.

A last picture from Ahmet: a Firecrest in Battersea Park collecting insects for its young.

Honeybees and a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee browsed on allium flowers in the Rose Garden.