Cold and hungry

It was a cold day and hungry small birds flocked out to be fed. Great Tits and Blue Tits gathered in trees in the Rose Garden.

A Blue Tit perched in the small hawthorn ...

...beside the lone male Chaffinch ...

... and a Coal Tit fidgeted impatiently in a rose bush for a gap in the stream of larger birds. This one comes to my hand ...

... unlike the one at Temple Gate, which has a hard time getting pine nuts from the ground as these inevitably attract Feral Pigeons. Maybe it will copy the other tits and allow itself to be hand fed, as has happened in the Rose Garden and the Flower Walk.

The Robin in the corkscrew hazel in the Dell threatened the other birds in vain. They simply flew round it.

The female at Mount Gate emerged from her bush when called.

There was a pair of Jays at the back of the bushes, probably looking for worms.

A Blackbird was doing the same in the Triangle shrubbery.

I think there are two Grey Heron chicks in the top nest on the island, only faintly visible but marked by the arrows here. I shot several minutes of video but it showed less rather than more and none of it is worth putting up. They are getting quite noisy.

This lesser Black-Backed Gull has dark eyes. I think they go dark when the bird has had and recovered from bird flu. Since the outbreak two years ago several such gulls have appeared in the park. They seem to suffer no long-term ill effects, unlike the geese and swans which are often permanently blinded or paralysed.

A Cormorant perched on their favourite dead branch on the island.

The Black Swan came over as soon as he saw me. He is very fond of sunflower hearts.

A small group of Mute Swans were displaying at each other by the Lido. I think this is a kind of beauty contest where unpaired swans compete for mates.

Jenna found a pair of Canada Geese courting and mating on the Serpentine this morning and filmed them on her phone. The large geese -- Greylags and Canadas -- have more or less stopped nesting in the park because of the growing number of Herring Gulls that snatch their goslings. Now they nest in a safer place and bring in their young as soon as these are able to fly.

A pair of Gadwalls fed by the boat hire platform. These quiet, well behaved ducks are usually seen in pairs, a contrast with the noisy groups of Mallards.