Destructive parakeets

Rose-Ringed Parakeets were eating pink cherry blossom in a tree at Mount Gate. Or rather, they picked a flower, chewed it for a moment to squeeze out some sweet nectar, and then spat it out and moved on to the next flower. In this way a few of these pretty but destructive pests can completely strip a tree of flowers or leaf buds.

In the cherry blossom in the Rose Garden there were a Blue Tit ...

... and a Great Tit with a passing Buff-Tailed Bumblebee.

The Coal Tits wouldn't pose here, but I got one in the climbing roses that completely surround an old tree stump.

A Robin looked out from the wintersweet bush in the Flower Walk.

The female at Mount Gate had a background of daffodils ...

... and a Blue Tit waited in the budding forsythia.

A male Chaffinch perched in the next bush.

A male Greenfinch sang his peculiar wheezing song in a tree near Peter Pan.

On the other side of the lake a male Goldfinch was singing in the top of a tall tree, not bothered by the twigs swaying in the breeze.

A Jay near Temple Gate finished the peanut I gave it in a few moments and asked for another.

The male Pied Wagtail on the Serpentine can put his sore foot to the ground and run if he needs to, but it's obviously painful and he prefers to keep it tucked up. There are now quite a lot of flying midges for him to catch in midair.

The female was a short way up near the Dell restaurant, looking at a patch of foam washed to the edge by the wind. This is formed naturally from fatty acids released by decaying organic matter, and is not a sign of pollution by detergents.

The Coots' nest at the bridge is getting larger.

The Mute Swans east of the Lido are now quite belligerent. I couldn't see who was chasing who, but the chaser is likely to be the male 4FYY who claims the nest site. His mate 4FUF was guarding the entrance to the nest to keep out other swans.

These are the same Canada Geese as I saw yesterday eating new willow leaves from the tree at the bridge.

The Egyptian Geese on the south side of the Serpentine still had seven goslings. Their father was looking suspiciously at a passing swan.

An Egyptian is nesting in a sawn-off tree a few yards away.