Little owlets in Hyde Park

As promised, Malachi sent me a fine picture of the two Little owlets in Hyde Park.

He also told me where the tree was, quite a long way from where I saw the parents earlier this year. I went there and found one of the owlets looking down from the hole. It's a few days older than in the previous picture and beginning to get adult eyebrows.

Apart from this pleasing find it was an ordinary day. The young Blackbird at Mount Gate was poking around under a bush.

Two Jays beside the Long Water were waiting for peanuts.

Pigeon Eater stared imperiously from his place on the Dell restaurant roof.

Starlings were out in force at the Lido restaurant, competing with Feral Pigeons for scraps.

The Grey Heron, which I hadn't seen for a while, was back and waiting on an umbrella for something better.

A Magpie had seen it and realised that an umbrella was a good lookout post.

The young herons in the nest on the island got excited when a parent arrived.

But it didn't have any food for them and retreated to a branch above the nest while the chicks danced frantically.

A heron on a boathouse roof was nattering irritably to itself, but no one was listening.

The youngest Coot chicks in the Italian Garden had realised that a duckboard was an easier way of getting up from the water than a desperate scamble up the kerb. Oddly, I've never seen a Coot get the idea of using a duckboard before.

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

The Black Swan leered at a Moorhen. Next to them was the Tufted Duck with a white face which sometimes gets misreported as a Scaup.

A Mute Swan on the Round Pond had a brisk wash and flap.

The little Mandarin was in good order.

Its two larger siblings on the Long Water were on the collapsed willow by the bridge.

A Common Carder bee climbed up a sage flower, maybe Russian Sage, one of the innumerable Salvia varieties in the park.