Long-Tailed Tit flocks

The damage to the horse chestnut trees caused by leaf miner moth is good news for the Long-Tailed Tits, which pick the larvae off the leaves.

Several flocks were going around the park, in company with other small birds such as Blue Tits and Coal Tits. This one was at Mount Gate.

The male Robin here was slightly tatty from rearing young ...

... but a Great Tit in the Dell had lost more feathers.

However, neither of them was as thoroughly wrecked as the poor Jays at Temple Gate, whose insatiable offspring chased them for weeks.

A young Robin in a holly near the Vista had clearly been at the blackberries.

A Song Thrush near the Italian Garden had a trace of juvenile yellow at the base of its bill showing that it too was young.

The Blackcaps at the southwest corner of the bridge are more heard than seen, but one came out for a moment in a holly tree.

A Wren chattered in an aucuba bush behind the Albert Memorial.

The male Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery was in his usual lime tree.

The Czech Black-Headed Gull stood on the old water level at Fisherman's Keep.

The new Egyptian Goose family seen yesterday was on the shore nearby. Thwre are four goslings, which wandered down the edge of the lake supervised by their parents.

The fallen poplar by Peter Pan provides a resting place for all kinds of birds. A Pochard watched some Canada Geese preening.

At the far end of the tree the Mute Swans and their single cygnet shooed off a Black-Headed Gull.

The other family came up the lake towards the bridge. This is the territory of the Black Swan, but he is in a subdued mood at the moment, and is not attacking them.

A Moorhen on the edge of the lower bowl of the marble fountain in the Italian Garden was surrounded by falling water, keeping it confortably cool.

A Red Admiral butterfly rested at the southwest corner of the bridge. Many of the Red Admirals we see are migrants that have crossed the Channel ...

... but their journey is nothing to that of the Painted Ladies, which travel from Africa as far as Scandinavia, going through as many as six generations on a migration of as much as 9000 miles. This is considerably farther than the famous migration of Monarch butterflies in North America.