Sedge Warblers by the Italian Garden

A young Blue Tit, still grey rather than blue, hung upside down to look for caterpillars of the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner moth that infests the conker trees in the park and makes brown patches on the leaves.

Long-Tailed Tits are equally happy upside down.

The pairs of Robins have now split up and both males and females are in full song. This one was on a dead oak branch at the back of the Queen's Temple.

This Robin in the bushes in Flower Walk. immaculate and not tattered by nesting, is probably the young one I photographed several times in the same place earlier this year, but now grown up and in adult plumage.

Ahmet Amerikali found a pair of Sedge Warblers under the edge of the Italian Garden. I only saw them dashing into the reeds, but he got a good picture. They are infrequent visitors to the park, much less common here than Reed Warblers.

He also got a fine shot of the elusive Wren in the Rose Garden, which you often see scuttling between the flower beds but seldom stops for long enough to photograph.

A pair of Magpies is often seen on a heap of felled branches in the shrubbery at the southeast corner of the bridge.

The Black-Headed Gull who owns the landing stage refused to budge when a much larger Lesser Black-Backed Gull invaded his territory. It was the larger gull that gave up and left.

Pigeon Eater was in his usual place by the Dell restaurant looking for his afternoon tea.

A young Grey Heron fished in the water lilies in the Italian Garden.

The male Great Crested Grebe from the east end of the island was looking after the three chicks while his mate went off fishing.

A young Moorhen took a rest from climbing in the willow by the bridge.

The Black Swan came over to collect some sunflower hearts.

I think there really is only one terrapin left on the Long Water. The most we ever had were five, four Red-Eared Sliders and a Yellow-Bellied Slider. Today you could see its head and there was no red streak showing, so it looks as if it's the latter that has survived.

We don't much want them on the lake, as they eat chicks. They were only here because their owners had dumnped them.

The patch of hemp agrimony in the Dell had attracted a Comma butterfly and a Speckled Wood.

Another Speckled Wood was well camouflaged in leaf litter near Peter Pan.

A clump of stonecrop in the Italian Garden had a very bleached Common Carder Bee ...

... and another of those tiny Buff-Tailed Bumblebees, no larger than the Common Carder. It's hard to believe that such different sized Buff-Tails are all the same species.