Small birds creep out of the bushes

It was a bit cooler today and the small birds, though preferring the shade, were venturing out in the bushes in the Flower Walk. They included a young Robin ...

... a young Great Tit ...

... and a Coal Tit looking extremely tattered from nesting and feeding young. But it was in good spirits and came to my hand for a pine nut, and it will get new feathers in the autumn.

There was the welcome sound of a young Blackbird begging under a bush. It stayed out of sight, but I did see the father looking for insects for it.

A young Blackcap preened in a holly tree beside the Long Water.

Ahmet Amerikali got a good shot of a Reed Warbler in a tree at the southwest corner of the bridge.

The dry weather has caused a lot of leaves to fall off the trees and the ground is looking almost autumnal. Three Jackdaws came out for peanuts at the Round Pond.

The little Mandarin duckling at the Round Pond is now alone. Its mother and the two larger ducklings, now able to fly, have deserted it and gone down to the Long Water. But the story is not all gloom, as several devoted people are bringing it mealworms and other good things to help it to grow, and it is growing noticeably and wing feathers are just beginning to emerge.

Here is one of the older ducklings at the Vista. Its flight feathers are not quite fully grown, but serviceable.

The Tufted Duck was here under the bushes with an unknown number of ducklings.

Yesterday Ahmet got a fine but horrifying shot of one being seized by a Lesser Black-Backed Gull, and reported that the number was down to eight from the original eleven.

The Mallard at the island had managed to evade the gulls for another day, and still had three.

The Black Swan was pulling up algae from the bottom of the Serpentine. Although he is smaller than a Mute Swan he has a prodigiously long neck and can reach down from some way offshore.

Another picture by Ahmet, of a Grey Heron catching a small fish under the Italian Garden. It's a Ruffe again, resembling a perch but without stripes.

I hadn't even heard of this fish until a few years ago, but now it seems to form the majority of catches on the lake.

A patch of globe thistles in the Rose Garden attracted a Honeybee, a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee, a Peacock butterfly and, for a moment at the end, a hoverfly, Eupeodes luniger.

The hoverfly has the cumbersome common name of Common Spotted Field Syrph, which I don't think anyone uses. Crescent Moon Hoverfly would be a neater name.

A Seven-Spot Ladybird climbed over a catmint flower.

Duncan Campbell was looking for insects in a patch of Field Thistle, Cirsium arvense, and made some interesting finds. This wasp with a ridiculously long ovipositor is a parasitic Carrot or Javelin Wasp, Gasteruption jaculator. The female injects eggs into the nests of solitary bees and wasps and the grubs feed on the grubs of its victims.

This is a European Beewolf, Philanthus triangulum, another persecutor of bees which it catches and takes to its nest to feed its grubs.

But he's far from certain about this, possibly a Blood Bee, a Sphecodes species ...

... and about this, which may be a Wilke's Mining Bee, Andrena wilkella.

A strange sight on Buck Hill, a man deploying a large foil kite. These things are used for windsurfing -- towing a surfboard, often with a hydrofoil under it. But what was he hoping to achieve in a meadow? He was wearing a helmet as if he expected to leap into the air. But the wind wasn't all that strong so, probably luckily, he stayed on the spot.