Sad news

The day started with dreadful news. The male Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery was found dead this morning by the gardeners. I had known this very small owl with stupendous eyebrows for several years. He will be greatly missed, not least by his mate. I do hope she wasn't already nesting -- or if she is, that she has the sense to abandon her eggs, go out and look for a mate for next year.

The continued absence of the owls at the Round Pond is probably a hopeful sign that they are nesting in the lime tree. When the female is sitting the male ranges far and wide to find food for her, so he is seldom seen.

But life goes on. The young Great Tits are now beginning to feed themselves, and several came to collect pine nuts from my hand in a clump of hawthorn trees near the bridge. The young ones are greener than the adults and have dull heads where the adults are glossy.

A Song Thrush was in full voice in a dead tree north of the Peter Pan statue.

The usual male Chaffinch chased me around Kensington Gardens. Here he is in the long grass by the Queen's Temple.

Ahmet Amerikali made some interesting finds. Here are three of his pictures. Young Goldcrests are out of their nest at Peter Pan, and he saw them feeding themselves.

The Robins' nest in the bush in the Rose Garden seems to have been predated, probably by rats as it was dangerously near the ground, and one of the Robins was gathering material for a new nest. It was under the row of pleached limes on the south side of the garden, which would be a much safer site.

A Reed Warbler under the Italian Garden had caught a Marmalade Hoverfly.

The three Mandarin ducklings at the Round Pond were shelting from the wind behind their mother, but couldn't keep still.

The Mallard family were cruising briskly around the edge.

I don't know what this Greylag Goose thought it was doing. It chewed a plastic buoy for several minutes.

At the Vista, the Red-Crested Pochard drake took against the Mandarin drake and chased him off.

The Black Swan hastily got out of the way of Mute Swans chasing each other by the Dell restaurant. Moulting makes them even more irritable than usual.

Jan Lawrence photographed a fox behind the eryngium clump at the east end of the Lido. I've never seen one there.

There was a rich variety of insects and I'm only showing a selection of pictures. At Peter Pan a clump of Brook Thistles attracted a familiar Buff-Tailed Bumblebee ...

... and Common Carder.

An oxeye daisy had a very small bee, I think a Nomada species, flying around it. The wasp wouldn't stop, so this is a bad picture.

A A Common Green Shieldbug, Palomena prasina, climbed around a Green Dock stem. Thanks to Conehead 54 for identifying this insect.

At the back of the Lido a Honeybee browsed on a clumb of extremely poisonous Hemlock Water Dropwort. The flower nectar seems to be harmless, but the rest of the plant if eaten causes an agonising death in two hours.

In the same place there was a gorgeous Rose Chafer beetle on an oxeye daisy.

A Thick-Legged Flower Beetle, Oedemera nobilis, climbed out of a bindweed flower by the Italian Garden.

A small skinny moth, which Conehead 54 thinks is probably a Chrysoteuchia culmella, perched on a blade of grass by the Queen's Temple,