A full house of Little Owls

The whole Little Owl family at the Serpentine Gallery was on view today, with the two owlets together in the chestnut tree ...

... their father keeping an eye on them from a lime ...

... and their mother in a more distant lime. I had to go back later to find her.

A male Blackbird was singing out of sight in the leaf yard, and a young one was on a lower branch listening to him.

On a hot afternoon the small birds were keeping out of sight in the shade, but Ahmet Amerikali continues to get good pictures of the Reed Warblers at the Italian Garden.

He also photographed a Cormorant catching a carp in one of the pools.

Yesterday we saw a Grey Heron catching carp here. In both cases they were going for fair-sized fish, but the water is teeming with young carp a couple of inches long.

A heron sunbathed in a boat at the island.

The Great Crested Grebes here have had very bad luck with nesting. The pair halfway along the island have lost their second nest to a Mallard, and the ones nesting on the chain lost theirs some time ago.

However, the pair under the balcony of the Dell restaurant are still keeping the nest they stole from the Coots.

These are the Coots in the southeast pool in the Italian Garden. When a parent starts preening, the chicks in the nest follow suit.

The solitary tatty Black-Headed Gull was feeling the heat. Its companions will start to trickle back quite soon.

The Black Swan was on the Serpentine taking care of his single hybrid cygnet while his Mute mate 4GIQ went off to have a wash.

A female Gadwall rested in the shade at the Triangle.

A Painted Lady butterfly drank nectar from a Verbena bonariensis in the Flower Walk.

A female Emperor dragonfly was laying eggs on a fallen iris leaf in the Italian Garden ...

... and a male rested on an upright leaf.

After the very brief and scanty showing of Red-Eyed Damselflies in the pools I was wondering how the Small Red-Eyed Damselflies, which come later, would fare. There were quite a few today.