A song on a chilly day

There are a lot of Robins in the Rose Garden close enough to see and hear each other, so they challenge their rivals with frequent song.

Another perched on a teasel before coming over for a pine nut.

A Great Tit lurked in the unseasonally flowering ceanothus, but was eventually bribed out.

Both Coal Tits appeared in the Flower Walk ...

... and the female Chaffinch was there again.

A Wren beside the Long Water refused to get into a good place for a picture.

A Magpie looked down imperiously in the Dell ...

... and two more were looking for insects in the grooves of the rubber matting at the Lido.

The single Common Gull on the Long Water stared from a post at Peter Pan.

A Grey Heron under the willow by the bridge wasn't troubled by the repairers' pontoon, as it provided another place for fish to lurk.

One of the two young Great Crested Grebes from the east end of the island, now adult size, was having a thorough preen.

A Cormorant perched on the dead tree on the island in front of a window-cleaning crane which looks oddly like the bird for which it is named.

Cormorants and Pochards had an autumnal background by the Vista.

A chance shot: I was about to photograph the killer Mute Swan's mate at the Triangle, seen here on the left of the picture, when the killer decided to chase a rival and at the same time two of his young finally got properly airborne. One of them flew over the bridge, only just getting enough height to clear it.

Two of the collection of exotic plants in the Dell: a Chinese Lantern, Abutilon pictum, from South America ..

... and a Handkerchief Tree, Davidia involucrata, from southeast China.

A sight on the way home. As far as is known there are only two James & Browne cars in existence. This 1902 model belongs to Imperial College, and I found it in Prince Consort Road. It has a two-cylinder engine with electric ignition supplied by a lead-acid battery -- the magneto hadn't been invented when it was made. Drive is by chain to the back wheels from a differential under the driver's seat. There are contracting band brakes on the rear wheels applied by a hand lever, and a transmission brake operated by a foot pedal, though using this tends to make the engine stall. It's fully roadworthy and has been on the London to Brighton veteran car run.

This is my 5000th post, and the total number of page views since I started the blog in 2012 is just coming up to 4 million.