Autumn sets in

Cooler weather and some heavy showers kept people out of the park, and the small birds were both ready to show themselves and quite hungry. A Blue Tit in the Flower Walk was poised to fly down for a pine nut ...

... and the usual female Chaffinch came out on the railings.

A Coal Tit perched on a catalpa bean in the Rose Garden. Encouraged by the other birds, it came to my hand twice.

A Robin posed in a background of rose hips.

Long-Tailed Tits were at work inside a weeping willow by the Serpentine. One paused for a moment on top of the tree.

Starlings went in and out of the plants on the edge of the Diana fountain. It wasn't clear what the interest was until one emerged with a large caterpillar.

A Carrion Crow waited on an umbrella at the Lido restaurant.

At the island, a young Grey Heron was having a fight with a Black-Headed Gull and grabbed it, though it only got a tuft of feathers.

Pigeon Eater's offspring was on the lake under its father on the roof, but mercifully it had shut up at last and he wasn't bothered.

A Great Crested Grebe arrived at the east end of the island with a fish, and one of the chicks hurried over to grab it.

The grebe with a single large chick was at the east end of the Serpentine.

The lone Coot chick near the Lido was being fed on algae.

This is the male Egyptian Goose in the Italian Garden whose mate is nesting. He was passing the time by having a shower in the marble fountain.

A Speckled Wood butterfly moved about the hemp agrimony clump in the Dell, drinking nectar from the little florets.

They may be very common and not brightly coloured, but they have a particularly beautiful pattern.

A bee in the same clump seemed too deep a ginger to be a Common Carder, as most of these are quite faded at the moment. But on closer inspection that's what it was. Its abdomen is too stripy for a Tree Bumblebee and it has no trace of a white tail.

At last I managed to get a picture of a male Migrant Hawker dragonfly perched on a twig near the Italian Garden.

There was a male Willow Emerald damselfly on a lower twig, and although we've had plenty of pictures it was impossible not to photograph this living jewel.