Another Little Grebe

A surprise today: another Little Grebe, a teenager, on the Serpentine. 

It was diving busily and completely ignoring the people who were looking at it on the shore. Did the adult pair on the Long Water, at present with small chicks, breed earlier in the year, or did this one fly in from somewhere?

The family on the Long Water have stayed under the collapsed willow by the bridge, a good spot as the tree gives excellent cover and there are plenty of small fish among the submerged branches. Occasionally one or two come out in the open and can be photographed from not too far away.

A Great Crested Grebe on the Serpentine stood up to shake out his wings.

The staff of the boat hire service on the lake have powerboats with 55 horsepower outboard motors and race about like complete hooligans, endangering humans and birds alike and raising an enormous wake. A Moorhen and her chick on the edge by the island were disturbed by the crashing waves.

A teenage Moorhen wandered along a floating branch in the Long Water. It's just beginning to develop its adult red bill.

There was a large mob of Coots on the Long Water. Every year there are more of these prolific birds, at the expense of the Moorhens which they persecute.

The Greylag family group was resting on the edge at Fisherman's Keep. It includes several adults as well as the young ones, all presumably related as they always stick together.

The four Egyptian goslings were nearby with their devoted mother.

One of the Cormorants at the island, apparently always the same one, likes balancing precariously on a chain even when there is a stable post to stand on.

Pigeon Eater was dozing on the Dell restaurant roof, probably after a large lunch, with his mate preening beside him.

A Black-Headed Gull turned downwind and was ruffled by the brisk breeze.

The female Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery appeared in her usual lime tree in the afternoon.

A couple of Carrion Crows enjoyed the spray from the marble fountain in the Italian Garden.

This Magpie near the Buck Hill shelter had been given a walnut. If they are spoilt with expensive treats they'll start scorning the humble peanuts I give them.

A Jay waiting in a willow looked to be a young one, immaculate unlike the adults worn threadbare by raising them.

The usual Robin in the Flower Walk has also lost a lot of feathers. There are two Robins in this section, both tatty and almost certainly a pair, and although the breeding season is long over they haven't yet started fighting each other. Some of the Robins are just beginning to sing again.

The durable strawflowers in the Rose Garden are much visited by hoverflies. This is a European Drone Fly, Eristalis arbustorum, which has been more numerous this year than the Common Drone Fly E. tenax.

A closer view of the Little Grebes

The Little Grebe pair and their four chicks, previously only visible at a distance on the Long Water, came right up to the bridge and could be filmed looking down from the parapet. I've left the noisy soundtrack of traffic and passers by unchanged so that you can hear the chicks squeaking.

Later they all crossed the lake to the weeping willow on the other side.

This fish was right at the limit of what a Great Crested Grebe chick that size could swallow, and its mother had to keep picking it up and presenting it before the chick got it down.

A Cormorant in the Italian Garden had no difficulty in swallowing a large carp. Thanks to Ahmet Amerikali for this picture.

A Coot on the Long Water confronted a Black-Headed Gull which had occupied its nest. For a moment it looked as if the gull would win ...

... but the angry Coot soon sent it off.

Three Mute Swans flew up the Serpentine in close formation ...

... and a skein of Greylag Geese passed the big trees by the boathouses.

The Reed Warblers are still here, and Ahmet got a picture of one of them by the Diana fountain.

The female Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery was in the big plane tree.

A Carrion Crow landed on the Huntress fountain in the Rose Garden carrying a crisp. Crows don't like crisp things ...

... so the snack was dunked in the water to make it acceptably soggy.

Two Jackdaws turned up on the lawn nearby and set to work opening the peanuts I gave them.

One of the tatty Jays in the Flower Walk was also waiting for one ...

... and a Blue Tit came out for a pine nut.

Long-Tailed Tits were at work in an almost leafless horse chestnut tree hit by both drought and leaf miner moth.

A Great Tit waited among ripening holly berries near Temple Gate.

A Common Carder bee browsed on yet another kind of vervain in a planter in the Italian Garden, Tuberous Vervain, Verbena rigida. I had no idea there were so many species of this plant.

Not so Common Tern

A Common Tern flew past the Vista and Ahmet Amerikali got a good photograph of it. They are rare visitors to the park, probably from the Grand Union canal where you sometimes see them flying up and down. Possibly the foul conditions of the London end of the canal sent it fishing farther afield.

There was once a tern raft on the Long Water in an effort to get them to nest here. But it was sadly mismanaged, and now it has fallen to pieces and all that remains is a couple of posts which are used as a perch by Cormorants.

A pair of Cormorants on the island arched their necks and clashed their bills in a courtship display. They'd never nest here, it's just a pair bonding ritual.

Back on the Long Water, one of the Little Grebes led the four chicks down the edge of the reed bed ...

... while the other came over with a fish.

The Coots in the waterlilies in the Italian Garden are still maintaining their nest.

The Egyptian goslings at Fisherman's Keep are now growing fast.

The eleven Mandarin ducklings on the Round Pond are now teenagers and no longer clustering around their mother. One of them dozing on the gravel strip was disturbed by a Jackdaw, came ashore, and ran remarkably fast to join two others browsing on some leaves that have remained green in the parched grass.

A young Grey Wagtail perched on a wire at the island.

Ahmet photographed a young Chiffchaff at the southwest corner of the bridge. There was a large family here with six or seven young.

He wondered whether this adult was a Willow Warbler, with pale legs, or a Chiffchaff, with dark legs. I'd say it was a Chiffchaff with the sun shining on its right leg. Also, in this position a Willow Warbler's wings, which are longer than those of a Chiffchaff, would probably have been visible.

One of the Coal Tits came down for pine nuts at the southest corner of the Dell.

The usual Robin in the Flower Walk appeared for its daily treat.

The female Little Owl at the Serpentine could be seen in a lime tree.

There was only a distant glimpse of a Hobby near the Physical Energy statue before it took off and disappeared among the trees.

A very worn Meadow Brown butterfly was almost invisible on the path in the Rose Garden.

A clump of stonecrop is coming into flower, attracting a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee.

This fly on a Michaelmas daisy looks like Tachina fera, a commoner species than T. longicornis which was the probable identification of the one I saw here on the 6th.

Young Hobbies out of the nest

The two young Hobbies are out of their nest, which was near the Round Pond but I never found it. They perched in a plane tree near the Physical Energy statue, a place that previous generations of Hobbies have often chosen. (I think the brownish colour of the underside of the one on the right is just a shadow, and not the red of an adult.)

The female Little Owl at the Serpentine Gallery was in the big plane tree, and gave me an angry look for disturbing her.

The male was in the lime that is much visited by both of them.

The Robin in the Flower Walk followed me along the path, collecting five pine nuts. Other people are feeding it as well, so it's a throughly spoilt young bird.

The Long-Tailed Tits were going around in big flocks accompanied by other tits and small warblers, a sign of approaching autumn. Ahmet Amerikali photographed this one at the southeast corner of the bridge.

A Wren searched for insects in a little clump of dogwood near the Lido.

A Jackdaw applied for a peanut on the lawn east of the Dell, not a usual place for them. But they fly all over the park, and every one of them expects to be given a peanut.

A Cormorant in the Italian Garden jumped off the kerb into a pool.

A Little Grebe bringing a fish to the chicks in the Long Water reeds passed a Coot going the other way.

The Great Crested Grebes with two chicks were in their usual place east of the island ...

... and the pair with one are now usually seen father east, beyond the boat hire platform. So far I haven't seen any territorial disputes between these families.

The pair with three, the youngest chicks, are still keeping hidden in the bushes around the island.

A Moorhen chick wandered away from its mother to search for anything edible in the muck at the edge of the lake. Moorhens can eat almost anything, the secret of their success.

One of the young Grey Herons from the fourth nest was climbing around the moored boats with an adult.

Another was at the east end of the lake, where the water is now the artificial-looking bright green of tinned pea soup.

The water in the Dell stream is worse, with broad patches of blue-green cyanobacteria. The electric pump for the fountain has been turned off in the hope that the foul water, which is now travelling through in one direction only, will drain away into the culvert leading to the Thames. But the flow is so sluggish that the water is getting worse and worse.

One of the two Mute cygnets on the Serpentine was weak on its feet and apparently suffering from some kind of poisoning. It's still eating and preening, so the rescue team are only watching it for the moment, but if it weakens further it will be taken into care.

Brown Hawker dragonflies, especially the males, are hyperactive and never seem to perch for a moment. So Ahmet scored a remarkable coup getting a picture of one in flight in the Italian Garden.

A Buff-Tailed Bumblebee went over the florets in the centre of a sunflower in the Rose Garden. Visiting every one of them for nectar is quite a job, and the bee may stay on one flower for ten minutes.