Kensington Gardens was closed, allegedly by an attempted terrorist attack on the nearby Israeli Embassy with drones carrying 'dirty bombs' -- explosive devices spreading radioactive material. Rumour is no more inaccurate than the stories in the media. So today's pictures were taken in Hyde Park, which at any rate gave a change from the normal route.
I went round the Hyde Park greenhouses, which stand in a large enclosure bordered by trees and pleasantly unkempt undergrowth. The most noticeable presence was quite a lot of Blackbirds, welcome as they have been sadly lacking recently. One sang in a treetop as the branches swayed in the wind.
Another was looking under the railings.
A Blackcap ticked loudly at a squirrel ...
... and a Robin looked down from a branch.
A Magpie perched above Epstein's lumpy relief of Rima.
She was the tragic heroine of W.H. Hudson's bestselling novel of 1904 Green Mansions, a girl of a mysterious white tribe in the South American rainforest who spoke the language of the birds and dressed in spider webs, not much in evidence here. I have tried to read it and gave up before the bottom of page one. The point here is that Hudson was a serious naturalist and studied the park, and this is his memorial. When it was put up after his death in 1922 several areas of the park, including the Dell, were fenced off as bird sanctuaries, and so they remain. The relief was much hated and people used to climb over the railings and paint it green. Now it only bears the grime of time and neglect in its overgrown enclosure, the fountains in front of it long stopped and the pool empty.
More cheerfully, a patch of green alkanet by the railings had attracted a handsome ginger Common Carder Bee.
Another Blackbird near the Dell pecked a large worm to pieces and ate it bit by bit.
I couldn't get in at Mount Gate, but the familiar female Robin spotted me as I passed down the West Carriage Drive and came out for pine nuts ...
... and the local Jay also arrived to take a peanut from the railings.
The male Peregrine was on the barracks tower, hunkered down against the wind and unwilling to look up.
Both the Grey Wagtails were collecting midges by the bridge. This one is the male. It looks as if they are nesting in the bushes at the Triangle, which is where the female was raised two years ago.
The nest seems to be roughly here, close to the bridge. There were three Grey Herons on the path, empty of people due because the tunnel into Kensington Gardens was closed.
A pair of herons perched among reed mace by the Lido.
Two of the young ones in the second nest watched as Wood Pigeons flapped in front of them.
Coots started to build a nest on a chain against a post at the bridge, a thoroughly bad place as Herring Gulls perch here ready to devour any chicks in an instant.
A Moorhen was ruffled by a tailwind as it looks for food on the edge of the lake.
In the Rose Garden the odd flowers of Bleeding Heart, Lamprocapnos spectabilis, attracted a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee. The stripe on its abdomen seems faint in the middle and I wondered whether it was a Vestal Cuckoo Bee, but on the whole I think not.
Buttercups have come out in the rough grass towards the Dell.
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