Three owls

Two visits to the Serpentine Gallery found a good selection of Little Owls: the female in a lime tree ...

... her daughter in another lime ...

... and her son looking down from the top of the big plane tree.

The small birds are getting back to their normal behaviour. A Robin in the Flower Walk came to my hand for the first time in months ...

... and the Great Tits in the Dell have returned to the corkscrew hazel bush where they can usually be found for most of the year.

A Jay followed me down the edge of the Long Water. As it swooped down to grab a peanut from my hand it alarmed a passing runner who thought it was attacking him.

A Carrion Crow dunked a Cheesy Wotsit in the marble fountain in the Italian Garden.

(Yes, that green slimy fountain really is made out of the finest white Carrara marble. When it was cleaned in 2011 it only took a fortnight to return to its pristine filth.)

A new tree for a Wood Pigeon to fall out of, the absurdly named Harlequin Glorybower, Clerodendrum trichotomum. The fruit it was eating is nowhere near ripe. Later it will develop into peculiar red and blue berries.

The male Pied Wagtail often seen around the Dell restaurant caught an insect on the stonework of the fake bridge in the middle of the dam.

The waterfall in the Dell is back in working order after several days when the electric pump was broken, and the foul smelly water in the little stream is beginning to clear.

The top stage of the waterfall is worked by the pump, and is actually slightly above the level of the lake on the other side of the dam. Water flowing out of the lake emerges at the stage below. The pump recirculates all the water in the stream, so it takes some time for the water to be completely changed as it flows into the culvert that takes the buried Westbourne river down to the Thames just upstream from Chelsea Bridge.

The Czech Black-Headed Gull dominates the south shore of the Serpentine from the Lido to the end of the lake, and any gull that comes near gets chased off. The old cast-iron water level provides a perch in the middle of his territory. He made his presence felt by calling loudly.

The Grey Heron in the Italian Garden had seized the Coots' nest in the waterlilies. The Coots and their two chicks were hanging around crossly in the pool, but there was nothing they could do.

A Coot took a few bites of a discarded watermelon at the edge of the Serpentine and went away, but a Moorhen really liked it. It spent a minute and a half eating it until it had had enough.

The Great Crested Grebes at the east end of the island were carrying one chick each. This is not a sustainable arrangement as one parent has to go off fishing, leaving the other to look after the chicks.

The single chick on the other side of the lake gets visibly larger every day, and is squeaking louder and louder.

The 'Polish' swan 4FUJ raised a grey foot among a group at the Triangle. There are several of these pale swans on the Serpentine, among them 4GIQ the Black Swan's mate. It's quite likely that they are all siblings, and also that they are all female, as the 'Polish' mutation is a sex-linked recessive one which makes it quite rare and also almost always seen in females.

The four Egyptian goslings were with their parents at Fisherman's Keep.

A Meadow Brown butterfly near the Serpentine Gallery looked so featureless that I wasn't sure what it was. Usually you can see a bit of dull orange and a dark spot on its front wings even when they are folded, but this one looks plain brown all over.