Colder means hungrier

A colder day made the small birds hungrier, and in the Rose Garden Blue Tits clustered in the bushes and perched on the camera when I was trying to photograph them.

A Coal Tit followed me across the lawn to the Dell, calling from a tree and flying down for pine nuts on the ground.

Another Blue Tit ...

... and Coal Tit were waiting impatiently in the corkscrew hazel in the Dell.

A Robin sang at Mount Gate. This is the female of the pair, singing only an occasional phrase: males sing more than females in spring though at other times it's about equal.

A male Blackbird looked for insects in the shrubbery beside the Henry Moore sculpture, and pulled up a worm on the lawn.

Someone had dropped an apple in the middle of the path by the Italian Garden, and a male Rose-Ringed Parakeet was hard at work on it, ignoring the people walking past on either side.

The Great Crested Grebes' nest on the chain at the west end of the island is in a perilous place. Last year the boat people destroyed a nest here by moving the boats, although they had been warned not to. They have been warned again this year, but whether they will take any notice remains to be seen. The good people of Bluebird Boats would have been most careful.

A couple of sunny days have raised algae at the east end of the Serpentine, providing shelter for fish and therefore a good place for a grebe to hunt them.

The Coot nest under the Dell restaurant balcony now has several menus in it.

The Mute Swan 4GIQ was on the nest basket again but didn't stay there long. She is by no means settled either here or by the landing stage, despite the efforts of the Black Swan ...

... who was on the shore preening his fine ruffles.

The swan nest on the island was empty, and the pair seemed to have moved up to the west end to start again. They had spent quite a lot of time piling up twigs for the first nest, so it seems likely that they will return.

In the reeds east of the Lido, 4FUF has laid her first egg. The pair were in the water nearby. She won't start incubating them till she has laid several more.

The Canada Goose pair are firmly established on the nesting island in the Long Water, untroubled by swans. The number of swans here has been whittled down to one pair by territorial disputes, and they are nesting on the gravel strip.

The six teenage Egyptians on the Serpentine are getting their wing feathers, but it will be some time before they attempt to fly.

The five goslings at the Lido were watchful and poised to flee as a loose dog approached.

A Gadwall drake on the edge of the Serpentine preened his wings and had a flap to settle the feathers.

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 resturant 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, so it may be be A. flavipes.

A Batman Hoverfly, Myathropa florea, 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.