Long-Tailed Tits in the Rose Garden

Trees near the Speke obelisk put on a show of  autumn colours.

There were more Blue Tits in the Rose Garden than usual ...

... as they were flying with a flock of Long-Tailed Tits, one of which posed obligingly in the same small hawthorn.

A Coal Tit was here too, interested in taking pine nuts but hiding the moment I touched the camera. I finally got a fleeting shot in a rose bush.

 There were several Great Tits in the big yew in the Dell ...

... and once they start coming down the Coal Tits notice the movement and appear too, though again it's always a game of hide and seek.

Two Robins within earshot of each other in the Rose Garden sang in rivalry.

Another was watching a gardener digging in the scrubby patch east of the Lido, waiting for him to take a break so that it could fly in and look for turned-up worms.

The one at Mount Gate was already on the railings and didn't need to be called.

Two Starlings sang on a giant flower pot at the Lido restaurant while they waited to raid a table.

A Pied Wagtail ran around the upper balustrade of the Serpentine Gallery ...

... and a young Grey Wagtail used the ornamental stonework at the Saerpentine outflow as a hunting station.

This is the only young Grey Wagtail in the park, and it was hatched in a nest by the bridge. Adults fly in from time to time but there is no established population as there is with Pied Wagtails.

The dominant Black-Headed Gull preened on the landing stage before flying up on to the head of the Big Bird statue to survey his domain.

A Grey Heron returned to the nest at the west end of the island.

A Great Crested Grebe was fishing under the concrete beams supporting the small boathouse. They have more places to fish now that the Cormorants are leaving, but as usual the Cormorants have absolutely massacred the fish in the lake so they have to work quite hard to find anything.

A pair of Mallards rummaged for insects in fallen oak leaves by the leaf yard.