Reed Bunting singing

A male Reed Bunting sang in a tree beside the Vista. It flew away over the bridge, and is almost certainly the one we saw earlier in the Diana reed bed.

Ahmet Amerikali got a good shot of a Reed Warbler under the Italian Garden.

We saw an unusually small woodpecker in an awkward place in a tree south of Peter Pan. I was hoping that it might be a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. but a check on its markings shows that it's a male Great, just an undersized one.

The Starlings have brought their young from the nest site at the back of the Lido to the restaurant. One was pestering a parent on the railings at the terrace.

A male Blackbird perched in the red-leafed cherry tree at the northwest corner of the bridge. This now has ripe cherries and is much visited by fruit-eating birds.

The Little Owl came out in the lime tree in the afternoon, as usual in a place where he was very hard to see.

It wouldn't be a proper visit to the park without seeing him or one of the Robins at Mount Gate. This is the male of the pair.

Ahmet was at Rainham Marshes yesterday and got a good shot of a male Bearded Tit in the reeds.

Coots are building a nest on the end of one of the new wood-framed baskets of water plants at the Triangle. The extra sound effect is from an ambulance going over the bridge.

The nest in the silly place halfway along the south side of the lake is still going and the pair continue to bring twigs to it. It has a slightly better foundation than appears at first sight, as it's built on a large crack in the concrete edge caused by subsidence.

The four teenagers under the Italian Garden were diving among the algae.

The belligerent Black Swan chased a rival away from his Mute mate on her nest.

She probably doesn't mind the stubborn Coot continuing to sit in the corner of the raft, but he really objects to the poor creature and constantly attacks it.

The Egyptian Goose from the Lido took her three teenagers to feed at the reed bed at the end of the restaurant terrace.

There was a pair with five recent goslings at the island. I don't think they are the remains of the eleven seen here earlier, as there was another Egyptian shading a heap of slightly older goslings from the sun a short way up the shore. It's getting really hard to keep track of the numerous broods.

The odd-looking Gadwall x Mallard hybrid drake was at the Lido.

A male Common Blue Damselfly perched on a grass stem at the southwest corner of the bridge.

Lastly, a most unusual picture from Ahmet: a Rose Chafer Beetle, Cetonia aurata, in flight.