More little Egyptians

There is another brood of Egyptian Geese on the Serpentine. The female was sheltering her new goslings on the netting over the new reed beds at the Triangle. You can see four here but probably there are more.

Her mate rested on the Mute Swan nesting basket a few feet away, not disturbed by a swan since they aren't interested in the basket which is far too exposed for their liking.

The Egyptian mother on the other side of the lake hurried her seven goslings down to the water as a loose dog approached.

A Great Crested Grebe had caught a perch at the Lido. This fish has to be turned round to swallow it head first because of its spiny dorsal fin, but the grebe couldn't do this at once because Black-Headed Gulls were hovering around waiting to grab the fish. The grebe carried the fish low in the water to avoid it being snatched until the gulls gave up and went away.

When the irises were planted in the Italian Garden fountains they were surrounded by a cage of steel tubes with plastic netting to protect them from being torn up by the Coots. The cages were rather ugly but they did the job. Later, the park management very foolishly decided to remove them. The Coots at once went to work ripping out the iris corms and scattering them all over the pools. Now that they are nesting they are further destroying the iris clumps by carrying off the corms as nesting material. In a few months there won't be any irises in the pools at all.

One of the young Grey Herons had jumped out of the nest into the adjacent one. It has done this before and got back successfully. It probably can't fly properly yet, but it can manage a wing-assisted leap of a few feet.

The male Peregrine was on the tower by himself.

Wood Pigeons at Mount Gate were eating leaf buds, which are full of sweet sap.

The male Robin came out on the path below to demand pine nuts.

The unattached Robin was waiting in the forsythia bush.

So was a Blue Tit.

Another Blue Tit in the Rose Garden was in dogwood blossom. They chew blossom to squeeze out nectar.

A Long-Tailed Tit was in the same tree with a different purpose, to collect lichen for a nest.

One of the pair of Coal Tits at Temple Gate flew out to a hawthorn tree to meet me. It's hard to feed these two as they are too shy to come to my hand, and they can't pick out pine nuts from the long grass under the tree. I did manage to feed it when I got to the path ...

... where the other Coal Tit had just caught a midge.

A Wren sang in a bush in the Flower Walk.

I got a report about the ring on the Cetti's Warbler seen yesterday. It was ringed by Bill Haines, not here but at the Barnes Wetland centre, on 11 June last year. It's male and was a full adult when ringed.

Bees were visiting the paperbushes in the Dell, not just a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee ...

... but also a male Hairy-Footed Flower Bee. Males are ginger, females black.

Cetti's Warbler at the Vista

On a beautiful sunny day a Cetti's Warbler was surprisingly visible in the bushes by the Vista. Not only that, but it had a ring and it was possible to read it: BEF2112. I've reported it, and it may be interesting to see where it came from. No one is ringing small birds here in the park.

There was a Green Woodpecker in the tree above ...

... and a Great Spotted Woodpecker in a tree across the path by the leaf yard. It was very high up and I didn't get much of a shot, but Ahmet Amerikali found it lower down and got a good picture. It's a female, without the male's red patch on the back of the neck.

A pair of Rose-Ringed Parakeets were mating in a nearby tree. The male was unexpectedly enthusiastic.

Near Peter Pan, several Greenfinches could be seen in a tree. This is a male ...

... and here is a female.

A Long-Tailed Tit was collecting lichen for its nest in the top of the same tree.

A Magpie looked smart in a nearby cherry tree ...

... and a small group of Jackdaws arrived to ask for pine nuts.

A Blue Tit perched in new leaves in the Rose Garden.

The Coal Tits weren't showing well anywhere, but I got a murky shot of one deep in the bushes at the southwest corner of the bridge.

There was a Goldcrest in a yew tree above.

Starlings chattered on the umbrellas at the Lido restaurant.

The male Little Owl was calling by the Ranger's Cottage.

Katja reported another Little Owl near the Speke obelisk. We used to have a pair here until 2022, when the old chestnut tree they nested in was killed by the drought and they left. This may be one of those, or a descendant.

The young Grey Herons in the top nest on the island were climbing around restlessly.

A Cormorant at Peter Pan forced another off a post, just to assert dominance. It could easily have chosen the next post which was empty.

A pair of Great Crested Grebes mated on a nest they have built on the edge of the reed bed by the Serpentine outflow.

Ahmet Amerikali found a Little Grebe on the Serpentine, a surprising place as the wide open expanse of water doesn't suit their habits.

The Egyptian Geese still have seven goslings.

A male Little Owl at the Ranger's Cottage

A Blackbird sang quietly to himself in a tree in the Flower Walk. They start singing later than the other songbirds and take a while to warm up, but it's worth waiting for them.

A Chaffinch and a Robin perched in a flowering currant bush near the Vista.

The female Robin at Mount Gate came out when called, looking untidy.

The Coal Tits in the Rose Garden were being difficult as usual but I managed to get a hasty picture of one in pink cherry blossom.

A Blue Tit looked out from a rose bush.

Wood Pigeons were eating myobalan blossom on the island. They eat a lot of flowers but take their time to consume each one thoroughly, so they do little damage to the tree -- unlike the wasteful Rose-Ringed Parakeets shown yesterday.

A bronze male Feral Pigeon on the edge of the Serpentine flirted with a black and white female, but she wasn't much interested in his advances.

A different pair of Pied Wagtails were chasing each other along the shore by the Dell restaurant. Both had avian pox blisters on their feet but it didn't seem to be slowing either of them down.

The distinctive high-pitched call of a male Little Owl could be heard coming from the lime tree by the Ranger's Cottage, and there he was next to a hole. I think this tatty old tree is completely hollow and the pair can climb around inside and emerge from other holes, where I've seen them.

Both the Peregrines were on the tower, as ever a wary distance apart. There is a practical reason for their standoffishness: at any moment one or both of them may choose to whizz out after a pigeon and they don't want to collide. You see the same thing on a much smaller scale with Pied Wagtails, also very swift hunters.

I've been keeping an eye on the upper west Grey Heron nest on the island, as there were frequent early signs of a couple wanting to nest there. Today you could just see one of them sitting. This is a one-year-old bird, still with a grey head, and it's been seen here before.

The large horse chestnut tree that fell into the Long Water many years ago has mostly rotted away and reeds have grown around it, but there are still some branches above water to provide a fishing station for a heron.

A Great Crested Grebe by the island preened in the wind.

The Black Swan was making a nest beside the landing stage by the Diana fountain, hoping to attract his reluctant Mute girlfriend 4GIQ. He chased her proper mate away earlier. It seems very unlikely that anything will come of this attempt.

She was on the other side of the landing stage, not interested in the nest.

The dominant Mute Swan on the Long Water and his mate were making a nest in a daft place on the bank by the Italian Garden, only yards away from where I have several times seen a fox. They have a good safe nesting island close by, and the male has used it before, so why isn't he there now? The boss swan has shown himself to be wonderfully thuggish, but his recent behaviour suggests that he isn't too bright even by swan standards.

While they were busy at one end of the Serpentine another pair of swans had crept under the bridge at the other end and were by the willow tree. If the boss sees them they will be chased away at once, but for the time being they were out of sight.