Three Blackcaps were leaping around in a hawthorn tree near Peter Pan, catching midges in midair.
They weren't put off by a Jay in the same tree.
There was a brief view of a Blackcap singing in a red-leafed cherry at the northwest corner of the bridge.
Blue Tits are as numerous in the Rose Garden as Great Tits, which is unusual for the park. More gathered in the corkscrew hazel in the Dell ...
... along with the usual pair of Coal Tits.
A Great Tit perched in juneberry blossom in the shrubbery east of the Lido.
Currant blossom at Mount Gate made a bright background for a Robin.
The male Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery came out on the chestnut tree as the sunshine warmed up a chilly day.
The Great Crested Grebe pair at Fisherman's Keep exchanged courtesies in the intervals of fishing together.
A Grey Heron was fishing in the reeds under the Italian Garden.
The Canada Geese are keeping possession of the Mute Swans' nesting island. The boss swan and his mate were away beating up the swans on the Serpentine, and didn't bother them.
The Egyptian Geese at the Lido have been taking good care of their goslings and still had seven.
A pair of Mandarins washed and, unexpectedly, dived in the little stream in the Dell.
Three terrapins sunbathed opposite Peter Pan. The one in the middle seems to be a Yellow-Bellied Slider, as it doesn't have the red stripe of a Red-Eared Slider. At least one of the others is the latter, as seen from earlier photographs. All the terrapins in the lake are dumped pets, as it's not warm enough here for their eggs to hatch.
This is the first Common Carder Bee I've seen this year, on a polyanthus in the Rose Garden.
A female Hairy-Footed Flower Bee approached a wallflower to insert its very long probsoscis. It's the first female I've seen ...
... though there have been lots of males. You'd hardly think the two were the same species.
I didn't know there were white Snakeshead Fritillaries, but there were some in the Flower Walk among the usual, and much prettier, purple kind.
... Insects. The surest path to insanity.
ReplyDeleteI hope I'm not going to jinx it, but I'm very hopeful about the prospects of those little Egyptians. They have uncommonly attentive and intelligent parents.
I always wonder why you get to many Blackcaps and so comparatively few Sardinian Warblers. They're always together in my neck of woods.
Tinúviel
The Sardinian Warbler is definitely a southern European species. Collins marks it as V**, meaning that they do turn up from time to time but are not rare enough to rate the full three asterisks that would have twitchers racing in from all over the land.
DeleteI passed by the Diana landing stage late afternoon and the Black Swan had succeeded in enticing his girlfriend on to the nest. Thanks to your blog I was able to disabuse a curious couple of their assumption that the white feathers poking out below the black were a sign of hybridity. They seemed genuinely grateful!
ReplyDeleteI was hoping that 4GIQ would not give in to the Black Swan's fair hootings. We really don't want ugly grey hybrids. If you look them up you will see that they are awkward creatures.
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