An uneasy truce

After yesterday's fight between the boss Mute Swan and the Canada Geese, the swans were making a nest on shore in the reed bed, while the female Canada was on the nesting island sitting on eggs. Her mate was guarding her. The swans decided to go down the lake to beg for food at the Peter Pan waterfront, and both passed the geese while the gander glared at them.

But later I heard that fighting had broken out again. This will not end well. Any goslings will be attacked by the boss swan. Apparently he has already killed the new Egyptian goslings on the Long Water. We feared that this might happen when we rescued them from the Italian Garden yesterday, and took them some distance down the lake to try to keep them apart, but their parents brought them straight back into the danger zone and paid the price for their stupidity. Today they were back in the Italian Garden looking depressed.

A Shoveller drake rested on the fallen poplar at Peter Pan.

Another dangerous place: the Coots on the post were adding to their nest. One of them brought grass for a lining. But the odds are strongly against any chicks surviving in this exposed spot.

Coots love bright nest ornaments. The nest at the bridge had a shiny gold sweet wrapper.

The Grey Heron at the Lido restaurant is getting bolder, and today it had come on to the terrace and was standing on a table.

A Herring Gull was eating a bit of apple it had got from somewhere. It's remarkable how many birds like apples, and they invariably prefer them to softer fruit. The people who feed the Rose-Ringed Parakeets have tried pears, plums, peaches and bananas, even strawberries, but all these are ignored in favour of apples.

The Black-Headed Gulls left for their breeding grounds weeks ago, but this tatty young one hasn't gone with them.

A Blue Tit ate a pine nut among the purple flowers of a cercis bush in the Rose Garden.

The pair of Coal Tits near the Serpentine Gallery usually follow me to the bridge. They won't come to my hand, but they can't be fed by putting pine nuts on the ground as they can't reach into the grass. So they have to wait till we get to the path, and there they have to take their chance with the clustering Feral Pigeons. They always manage to get some.

The male Chaffinch was waiting in the dogwood at Mount Gate ...

... and the unattached Robin ...

... and the usual Jay were also here.

A Wood Pigeon ate the young leaves of a plum tree in the Triangle shrubbery.

A pigeon on the Huntress fountain in the Rose Garden had a pale version of the original wild Rock Dove pattern with two dark wing bars, as seen on the other pigeon behind it.

Every year snakeshead fritillary flowers come up beside the path between the Buck Hill shelter and the Henry Moore sculpture, and the patch is spreading.

Cowslips have appeared by the east gate of the Lido. This is the end of the old wildflower patch, now neglected, but I don't think that cowslips were ever planted here so the seeds must have been transferred from the clump on the other side of the bridge.

There is a patch of bluebells by the Serpentine Road east of the Dell, with a single surviving daffodil from the earlier display.