Chicks and parents

Young Great Tits in the bushes by the bridge clamoured for their parents to feed them.

A young Long-Tailed Tit at Mount Gate was looking dapper and fluffy ...

... but a parent was frazzled by the strain of nesting and feeding the chicks.

A Reed Warbler near the Italian Garden was catching insects for its young.

Ahmet Amerikali found a Whitethroat near the Buck Hill shelter. It's probably the same bird that I photographed yesterday a few yards away.

A Jay stared grandly from a stump in the Flower Walk.

A large party of Swifts was hunting over the Serpentine, sometimes coming down to catch low-flying midges.

This is the male Pied Wagtail who had a sore foot several months ago. He is now fit again though a small blister remains on his right foot. He was running around the Serpentine Road, sure that he could avoid oncoming dangers thanks to his rocket-like takeoff.

The three Grey Heron chicks looked out from the nest at the east end of the island.

I also heard the clacking of heron chicks from the middle of the island, but the nest was impossible to see from any angle. This would be the fifth nest this year, and there's still time for more.

In the water below, the Great Crested Grebes who lost their eggs halfway along the island were wanting to take the nest back from a pair of Coots that had occupied it. They had no difficulty in removing the Coots, but this could go either way as the stubbornness of the Coots may defeat the agility and sharp beaks of the grebes.

Duncan Campbell shot this close-up view of a brand new Coot chick in a fountain pool in the Italian Garden yesterday.

 When I went back to check today I could only find one more chick, but it's still possible that others are on the way.

A Coot has built a nest in an absolutely idiotic place, on one of the electric pedalos. Quite apart from the fact that the boat will be brought into use, they don't realise that if they make a nest above the water level the chicks won't be able to get back in. Even the other adult is finding it hard to get up.

The Black Swan had finally realised that the remaining eggs on the nest are not going to hatch, and got off to be with his Mute mate and the single cygnet. It may not be much of a result but he was clearly proud of it.

Ahmet Amerikali photographed the mother 4GIQ carrying the cygnet.

The Mute Swan with five cygnets went along the edge of the Dell restaurant terrace, hoping to find someone at at table who would throw them a titbit. It was a grey drizzly day so she was out of luck. She chased off a Grey Heron which might have been thinking of snatching one of her cygnets.

The Common Pochard on the Long Water still had one surviving duckling.

There were two Red-Crested Pochard drakes. Their arrivals and departures are comppletely unpredictable.