Sun and song

On a beautiful sunny day a Song Thrush near the Italian Garden didn't feel the need to shout.

A Blackbird sang from the top of an oak by the Henry Moore sculpture.

At the beginning of the clip you can hear this Robin singing briefly at the bottom of the tree.

On the other side of the path a Wren on a bramble shifted nervously as people walked by on Buck Hill.

A Starling at the Lido restaurant had won a bit of someone's fish and chips.

Seen at Fisherman's Keep, this is the male Pied Wagtail who had a painful avian pox blister on his right foot. It's almost completely gone down now, and he was running about happily.

It's hard to see into the Grey Heron nests on the island, but it looks as if the chick partly visible here is younger than the three from the second nest and is one of a third brood. This nest is in the same tree as the second nest but higher up.

Two male Great Crested Grebes were having a territorial dispute in the water below. As usual it didn't come to a fight and the result was inconclusive. The one on the right went off to his mate and they had a little natter together.

Again it's hard to see, but in this view across the Long Water by the bridge it looks as if the grebe on the left is at a partly completed nest. The other examined a terrapin basking on a branch.

A Coot fed a chick in the nest under the Italian Garden.

The nest under the balcony of the Dell restuarant is now complete and in use -- at least until the next westerly gale. Menus from the restaurant which blow into the water are usually added to nests here.

The Mute Swans nesting on the gravel strip in the Long Water always have a retinue of Tufted Ducks, but it seems surprising that they are still tolerating the pair of Canada Geese that have been resting next to them for several days.

The Egyptian Geese at the Triangle looked after four of their five goslings ...

... while the fifth headed insouciantly into the middle of the lake catching midges.

A female Hairy-Footed Flower Bee visited a cowslip by the bridge.

A delicate little Andrena mining bee browsed on a Star of Bethlehem in the Rose Garden. Its legs have a slight yellow tinge, bit I think not enough for it to be A. flavipes.

A Batman Hoverfly, Syrphus ribesii, rested on a leaf. When you look at the mark on its thorax this way up you can see why, in the days before D.C. Comics, it was called the Death's-Head Hoverfly.

A bunch of balloons celebrating the birth of a girl had got loose and driftred away over south Kensington. Absit omen.

Back to normal, eventually

Kensington Gardens was still closed when I went into the park, as the police poked around for radioactive drones. The female Grey Wagtail was collecting midges for her nestlings at the bridge ...

... and a male Pied Wagtail was hunting for himself.

In the greenhouse enclosure a male Blackcap launched himself off a twig.

A male Blackbird perched on a pollarded lime tree in the Rose Garden.

A female dug a hole in wood chips under a tree near the Dell, looking for insects. At 7 seconds into this clip she found a larva.

A Coal Tit perched in a yew in the Dell ...

... above the pair of Mallards which have been in the same place for several days.

The Long-Tailed Tits nesting on the edge of the Ranger's Cottage garden were gathering insects for their young.

A Great Crested Grebe was fishing by herself near the Serpentine outflow.

The Black Swan's Mute girlfriend rested on one of the swan nesting baskets while he patrolled the water in front. The nesting Coots have had two kinds of geese here already and were not going to be scared off. Later the swans went away.

The large patch of green alkanet by the greenhouses attracted at least four kinds of bee, and I got pictures of a Common Carder ...

... a worker Early Bumblebee ...

... a female Hairy-Footed Flower Bee ...

... and a Red Mason Bee, Osmia bicornis.

Other insects included a Speckled Wood butterfly on a bluebell ...

... and, in the Rose Garden, a Flesh Fly, a Sarcophaga species, maybe S. carnaria, on a polyanthus.

Kensington Gardens reopened just as I was going home, so I went in at Mount Gate and found the familiar female Robin ...

... and along the Flower Walk where a Blue Tit was waiting in a bush ...

... and a Jay looked expectant on a stump.

Part and parcel of city life

Kensington Gardens was closed, allegedly by an attempted terrorist attack on the nearby Israeli Embassy with drones carrying 'dirty bombs' -- explosive devices spreading radioactive material. Rumour is no more inaccurate than the stories in the media. So today's pictures were taken in Hyde Park, which at any rate gave a change from the normal route.

I went round the Hyde Park greenhouses, which stand in a large enclosure bordered by trees and pleasantly unkempt undergrowth. The most noticeable presence was quite a lot of Blackbirds, welcome as they have been sadly lacking recently. One sang in a treetop as the branches swayed in the wind.

Another was looking under the railings.

A Blackcap ticked loudly at a squirrel ...

... and a Robin looked down from a branch.

A Magpie perched above Epstein's lumpy relief of Rima.

She was the tragic heroine of W.H. Hudson's bestselling novel of 1904 Green Mansions, a girl of a mysterious white tribe in the South American rainforest who spoke the language of the birds and dressed in spider webs, not much in evidence here. I have tried to read it and gave up before the bottom of page one. The point here is that Hudson was a serious naturalist and studied the park, and this is his memorial. When it was put up after his death in 1922 several areas of the park, including the Dell, were fenced off as bird sanctuaries, and so they remain. The relief was much hated and people used to climb over the railings and paint it green. Now it only bears the grime of time and neglect in its overgrown enclosure, the fountains in front of it long stopped and the pool empty.

More cheerfully, a patch of green alkanet by the railings had attracted a handsome ginger Common Carder Bee.

Another Blackbird near the Dell pecked a large worm to pieces and ate it bit by bit.

I couldn't get in at Mount Gate, but the familiar female Robin spotted me as I passed down the West Carriage Drive and came out for pine nuts ...

... and the local Jay also arrived to take a peanut from the railings.

The male Peregrine was on the barracks tower, hunkered down against the wind and unwilling to look up.

Both the Grey Wagtails were collecting midges by the bridge. This one is the male. It looks as if they are nesting in the bushes at the Triangle, which is where the female was raised two years ago.

The nest seems to be roughly here, close to the bridge. There were three Grey Herons on the path, empty of people due because the tunnel into Kensington Gardens was closed.

A pair of herons perched among reed mace by the Lido.

Two of the young ones in the second nest watched as Wood Pigeons flapped in front of them.

Coots started to build a nest on a chain against a post at the bridge, a thoroughly bad place as Herring Gulls perch here ready to devour any chicks in an instant.

A Moorhen was ruffled by a tailwind as it looks for food on the edge of the lake.

In the Rose Garden the odd flowers of Bleeding Heart, Lamprocapnos spectabilis, attracted a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee. The stripe on its abdomen seems faint in the middle and I wondered whether it was a Vestal Cuckoo Bee, but on the whole I think not.

Buttercups have come out in the rough grass towards the Dell.

Singing Goldcrest

A Goldcrest sang in a yew tree on the north edge of the leaf yard.

The pair of Coal Tits in the Dell were also in a yew, chasing each other flirtatiously.

A Long-Tailed Tit hung upside down in a tree near Peter Pan.

A Great Tit looked out from cercis blossom in the Rose Garden.

A Blackcap at Mount Gate was carrying a feather to line his nest.

A Song Thrush perched in a tree at the southwest corner of the bridge.

A Jackdaw was getting impatient on a dead hawthorn north of the leaf yard.

A Grey Heron fished under the willow by the bridge.

This nest on a chain by the island was originally built by a pair of Coots, which are good at making nests stick in awkward places. Great Crested Grebes probably couldn't have started it here. But they have taken over the twiggy nest and reduced it to the sloppy mess they prefer, and were adding bits of weed to it.

Somehow the Egyptian Geese at the Dell restaurant have managed to keep two goslings right in the heart of Pigeon Eater's territory. They passed close by his mate with the dangerous gull himself only a couple of feet farther away.

This Mute Swan sitting on the nest in the reeds at the east end of the Lido is 4FYY, the male of the pair. It's a sign that they haven't got eggs yet, as only the female -- in this case 4FUF -- sits on them. If he was guarding eggs while she was away he'd be standing over them.

Two interesting views of swans at the Lido by Mike Harris taken with his waterproof camera, at water level ...

... and below.

The Black Swan and 4GIQ were resting in the nesting basket at the Triangle, here seen from across the lake. They wouldn't be nesting in it, as they already have a place by the Diana fountain landing stage, and indeed no swan has ever shown signs of wanting to nest on one of these baskets.

Brimstone butterflies have been in the park for a couple of weeks, but they are hard to photograph as they are very active. At last one settled down to feed on a bluebell by the Vista.

And finally an Early Bumblebee has appeared in their usual place on the green alkanet near Temple Gate.

In the Rose Garden, a Yellow-Legged Mining Bee fed on a wallflower ...

... and a Honeybee was heavily laden with pollen on a Cuban lily (which isn't a lily at all, of course, or even Cuban: it's a type of squill, Scilla peruviana -- and it isn't Peruvian either, it's a Mediterranean plant).