A Robin on top of the Rose Garden pergola sang while it waited for the gardener working below to turn up some worms for it. It's probably one of the two nesting pairs here.
At the southwest corner of the bridge, both parents were gathering insects and larvae for their young. The one in the first picture flew to my hand to add a pine nut to the collection.
A Great Tit fed a fledgling in the Flower Walk.
A Blackbird sang on top of the corkscrew hazel, whose leaves are as twisted as the twigs.
The usual male Chaffinch turned up at the Serpentine Gallery and pestered me constantly for pine nuts ...
... while I was photographing the male Little Owl. It was drizzling and he was damp, but he is a tough creature and I've seen him out in the rain before.
The Reed Warbler in the Italian Garden reed bed was looking soggy too.
No owls to be seen at the Round Pond, where is was windy as well as wet. As I stood on the edge of the water a Pied Wagtail trotted up and ran past inches from my feet.
The two duck families were circling the pond rapidly.
For the second time in a week a pair of Common Terns have visited the Long Water. If only we had a proper raft for them to nest on.
One of the young Grey Herons from the fourth nest was in the next tree. It would have had to make a proper flight, though a short one, to get there.
The other two remained in the nest.
Two half-grown Coot chicks were preening on the Mute Swans' nesting island.
The swans were in residence with their cygnets, but they left the Coot family alone. There's clearly some mutual benefit, but it's hard to say what it is.
The Huntress fountain is a valuable resource for the birds in the Rose Garden, which come here to drink and bathe. Today it was visited by a pair of Egyptian Geese.
Some hardy Buff-Tailed Bumblebees were out in the drizzle feeding on the little mauve flowers of the Lamb's Ears. This one was sensibly sheltering under a leaf.
In a dry interval a Caddis Fly came out behind the Lido. There are over 200 species, so it's impossible to know which this is.
I'm sure there are insect people who'd be able to i.d. the fly species just from a tiny piece of their wings. It's bewildering.
ReplyDeletePoor Little Owl looks drenched, but at least he doesn't look unhappy.
Tinúviel
That is a very odd insect. It seems to have two pairs of antennae, one ridiculously long and the other short and fringed.
DeletePerhaps the legendary aversion of owls to getting wet is exaggerated. I remember the male Little Owl who arrived at the leaf yard in April 2012 (and is the subject of the picture in my first ever blog post on 6 April), when it started raining hard after a long spell of hot dry weather, standing on a branch in the full downpour with wings outstretched, deliberately getting soaked. Also it may be (I really don't know) that owls' inner coat of feathers is waterproof so that they only get wet on the outside, like Cormorants, and can dry quickly. It wasn't cold, just rather wet.