Small birds getting hungrier

As the weather gets colder it takes longer to walk down the Flower Walk with small birds, mostly Great Tits, thronging out of the bushes. One looked out from the big leaves of a fatsia bush ...

... and another waited in the untimely flowers of a viburnum. Trees that blossom prematurely seem to be able to recover without damage and repeat in the real spring, but they must be wasting their vigour.

Both of the Coal Tit pair appeared in the Dell. This one seen in the corkscrew hazel has tiny white eyebrows ...

... and this one in the yew is all black above its eyes. No idea which is male and which is female.

With Chaffinches the difference is obvious. This is the female of the pair in the Rose Garden, inside the tall pleached lime hedge about to swoop down and take some pine nuts from the ground.

Three Robins with different characters and habits: the one in the Rose Garden perches calmly on my hand and takes as many pine nuts as it can carry ...

... the one at the southwest corner of the bridge remains nervous but will dash down, grab one without landing and flee into the bushes ...

... and the one at Mount Gate needs to be called, but will then appear in a bush at the back and fly down to take pine nuts from the path. It would never come to my hand. (Time to order some more pine nuts, they're going fast.)

A Jay by the leaf yard waited on a rail for a peanut ...

...and so did a Magpie in a willow at the Vista. (Peanuts are also running out, but at least they're cheap.)

I don't feed Starlings, as they get quite enough from scavenging leftovers at the Lido restaurant and digging up wireworms in the grass. A small flock circled over the Serpentine before descending on the restaurant.

When a Starling wins a bit of cake, it must instantly carry it away to a secluded spot to eat it before it's mobbed by the others.

It's always a pleasure to meet a Pied Wagtail hunting along the edge of the lake, too busy to be afraid if you simply stand in its way and point the camera.

The Czech Black-Headed Gull, seen here on his usual post, has become an expert in begging food from people picnicking on the benches.

A Grey Heron was fishing on the edge of the island.

It's not clear how many young ones survived from the 17 fledged earlier this year but there are certainly a lot of them to be seen around the lake, including this one at the Mute Swans' nesting island on the Long Water.

Speaking of swan nesting islands, the Hyde Park mangement seems to think that making two new floating islands in the Serpentine will encourage more swans to nest. So it will, if the managers ever get around to choosing where they are to go -- but there are already far too many swans in the park, most of them crowded into the confined space of the Round Pond, and the last thing we need is more. It would also cause more territorial fighting and injury.

The Black Swan on the Round Pond attracted admiring comments, and quite right too.

Ahmet Amerikali found a Cormorant still finding a small carp inside the submerged wall under the Italian Garden. This area, about the size of two pingpong tables, is where fish of several species come to spawn, but you would have supposed that the ruthlessly efficent Cormorants would have emptied it months ago. The only explanation seems to be that fish seek shelter behind the wall in the false belief that it's a safe place.