A drizzly day

On a day of blustery wind and occasional drizzle the Little Owls in Hyde Park were staying in their hole, and all I found in their tree was a couple of Jackdaws.

Young Magpies at the Henry Moore sculpture were bickering over something. I thought someone had thrown food to them, though it would have been hard to do at that distance. 

But a closer look shows that they were playing with bits of stone from the gravel under the sculpture.

A Jay in a nearby tree applied for a peanut.

A Carrion Crow inspected the leftover bin at the Lido restaurant. Scavenging Starlings can fly in and out, but a crow is too big to do that. It's probably just as well, because a diet of junk food leaves them with bleached feathers. They ought to be digging up nutritious worms.

The Great Tits in the Flower Walk were hungry and came out in mobs to be fed. Insects are less available in the rain.

The young Pied Wagtail I filmed a few days ago begging to be fed by a parent is now independent and doing its own hunting along the edge of the Serpentine.

Like many birds, they are quite curious about the big camera, so you can easily take still pictures of them.

But when you point a smaller camera at them they become shy and skittish. I think this is because the deep lens hood of the big camera hides the glitter of the lens, but on a smaller camera the lens is visible and they see it as an eye staring at them.

The dominant Black-Headed Gull on the landing stage shooed off a young gull that had landed in his territory.

Pigeon Eater and his mate were on the roof of the Dell restaurant. Evidently she was telling him to go and get something to eat, as a second later he flew off and started hunting along the shore.

One of the young Grey Herons had climbed on to a branch above the nest.

A slightly older heron was fishing in the rain on the small waterfall in the Dell.

All was peaceful on the Great Crested Grebes' nest at the island.

The Coots nesting on the chain are nervous about the Cormorants. They are OK with one climbing on to a post, but when one swims close to the nest it gets firmly escorted away. Even big Cormorants don't want to tangle with an angry Coot.

The Mute Swan family were returning from a trip up the lake to bully the other swans ...

... which was probably why the swan with single cygnet had come ashore. But they were happy enough begging for food from the visitors.

The Egyptian Goose with three goslings went to feed on the grass on the north side of the lake. Unfortunately it's quite a long walk across the broad lakeside path, the Serpentine Road and the horse ride to reach the narrow green strip at the top of the picture, and there's another path to cross to get on to the main lawn. If a dog appears in the distance they have to sprint all the way back to the water.

A quick check on the little Mandarin on the Round Pond found it in good shape.