Cooler weather brings out the small birds

A female Blackcap was ticking loudly at an intruder which had interrupted her eating crabapples behind the Lido.

A Starling had won a chip at the restaurant ...

... where a Common Carder bee was browsing on the strange tubular flowers of what turns out to be a Firecracker Plant, Cuphea ignea.

A Long-Tailed Tit paused for a moment among the sloes in a blackthorn bush near the Henry Moore sculpture. It would have been after insects, not the fruit.

It was part of a mixed flock that included this Blue Tit in the adjoining hawthorn tree.

A Wren sang in the leaf yard.

The familiar female Chaffinch was waiting in a yew in the Flower Walk.

Pigeon Eater had gone to the Long Water again, and was on the posts at Peter Pan.

Maybe he was trying to get away from his annoying whining youngster. It didn't work -- he was followed.

The Great Crested Grebes at the east end of the Serpentine were feeding their chick. I think they only have one.

It's the same with the pair on the Long Water. In fact the father had just taken it under the bridge on to the Serpentine where there are more fish to make it easier for his mate to deliver her catches.

A Coot at the edge of the Serpentine had a really vigorous wash. Maybe it's a way of trying to channel their constant fury.

The young Mute Swans were using the closed swimming area at the Lido for their first attempts at flying. It will be some time before they get airborne.

Tom got an interesting picture of a Black-Headed Gull catching a fish.

He was also at Rainham Marshes, where he got this remarkable shot of a Spotted Flycatcher about to take an insect.

He found a Wood Sandpiper ...

... and a Wall Brown butterfly.

A welcome shower

It rained around noon, but soon cleared up. Raindrops on a spider's web brought a little grace to the hideous sheet metal fence at the back of Peter Pan.

The ground was softened just enough to bring out the Starlings to hunt for wireworms in the grass.

The tatty Robin was waiting at Mount Gate as usual ...

... today accompanied by a Great Tit.

Pigeon Eater's offspring was on the Dell restaurant terrace moaning incessantly. Both parents were away and the youngster was feeling lonely and neglected.

The lone Mute cygnet was here too by itself. It seems perfectly happy to be on its own.

The Egyptian Geese still have their one gosling, which is now quite large. They were by the boathouse.

The male Egyptian whose mate is nesting near the Italian Garden mooched on the kerb of a pool ...

... but when another Egyptian flew past he sprang into the air to chase it down the Long Water.

A Moorhen enjoyed climbing in the purple loosestrife on the island.

The local Great Crested Grebe family were by the moored boats. These give both protection from swooping gulls and good fishing opportunities, as fish lurk in the shadows underneath.

The pair with two large chicks were on the south shore again, evidently another good fishing spot.

The male grebe from the willow by the bridge was off the nest with his wings raised. There's certainly at least one chick, but it wasn't showing.

The teenage grebe from outside the park had a preen and a flap.

A large Buff-Tailed Bumblebee browsed on a verbena flower at the Lido restaurant.

The ivy at the back of the Lido is in flower. I looked for an Ivy Bee but only found a Batman Hoverfly, an ornamental enough creature.

Joan Chatterley was at Walthamstow Wetlands, where she found a Kingfisher with a fish ...

... and a Little Egret.

Yet another grebe family on the Serpentine

It turns out that there are four Great Crested Grebe families on the Serpentine, one more than I thought. They were all busy out on the lake and I couldn't resist filming all of them.

These are the ones from the easily viewed nest at the east end of the island, now out on the lake with their parents fishing under moored rowing boats.

These were at the west side of the island, with their father bringing one of the chicks a small water creature. The chicks are already diving but not staying down for long. I don't know where they nested, though clearly it was on the island.

These were on the south shore of the lake, well away from the island, but I think this is the family from the nest halfway along the island, as the two chicks are older and larger than any of the others. One of them got a fish.

These are from the nest under the Dell restaurant balcony. I could only see one chick, but I think there are two and the other was hidden under its parent's wings. The chick was offered a fish, but this was slightly too large for it to manage.

A Greylag Goose was pecking at the empty nest, which caused a moment of alarm before I found the grebes at the other corner of the lake.

I couldn't see what was going on at the nest under the willow on the Long Water. If the sitting grebe turns its back it more or less disappears. We know that there is at least one chick, but will just have to wait till they come out on to the water -- and even then they may stay out of sight under the tree.

A Moorhen had a preen and a stretch on the edge at the Vista.

A Mute Swan was attacking some others at the east end of the Serpentine. At first sight I thought it was the killer male come over from the Long Water to cause mayhem, but it turned out to be the mother of the lone cygnet having an episode of maternal solicitude. You can see the cygnet in the background.

There was another Greylag with a white face here. It looks very like the one seen earlier of the Round Pond, but its pattern is slightly different. They may be siblings.

An Egyptian Goose was preening, showing off its fine iridescent green secondaries.

A Black-Headed Gull hurried to eat a bread crust before another gull nabbed it.

It was quite warm, and a Grey Heron was keeping in the shade of a charging post on the electric boat platform.

A Cormorant jumped on to a post at the island.

The Bank Holiday crowds kept most of the small birds from appearing, but the faithful tatty Robin at Mount Gate came out for some pine nuts.

A Jackdaw was waiting on a fallen tree by the Round Pond.

Duncan Campbell photographed a squirrel eating the fruit in a yew tree. The red outside of a yew fruit is sweet and edible but the seed inside contains poisonous taxol. Birds can eat the whole thing without ill effects as the seed passes through their quick digestive system without time for the poison to seep out, and indeed this is how the tree distributes its seeds. But I think that squirrels chew off the outside and discard the seeds, as in an old video of mine here. Duncan thinks that this squirrel was actually eating the seeds. This needs more observation.

He also saw an unusually hairy Honeybee in a cosmos flower in the Rose Garden, and could hardly believe that it was a Honeybee, but it doesn't seem to be anything else.

And he got a fine picture of a Common Darter dragonfly, showing that its red colour extends to the roots of the wings, and also on to the pterostigmata, the little solid bits on the leading edge of each wing that act as weights to control its profile as it flaps. On a Red-Veined Darter the red is much more extensive, as we saw earlier when there were a lot of them on the Round Pond.

Migrant Hawker dragonflies were zooming around, and a couple of Brown Hawkers too, but none of them would stop for a photograph. However, several Willow Emerald damselflies perched in the trees by the Italian Garden and allowed their pictures to be taken.

Grebe chick seen at the bridge

The Great Crested Grebes nesting under the willow by the bridge do indeed have at least one chick. It's hard to see what's happening from the only viewpoint on the far side of the Long Water, but you can just glimpse its head poking out from a parent's back.

One of the three chicks at the Serpentine island was given a fish by its mother. The parents are careful to feed all the chicks in rotation so that the pushiest chick doesn't get all the fish.

All was quiet at the Dell restaurant but you could see the head of one of the chicks. I still don't know how many there are, but it's at least two.

A Moorhen looked for insects on the Coot nest at Peter Pan, watched by a Black-Headed Gull.

A moment later the Coot rushed over and chased it off.

The male Egyptian Goose in the Italian Garden was alone, almost certainly a sign that his mate is nesting in a tree nearby. He rested in the shade of an urn.

Later, still alone, he had a bathe in the marble fountain.

The Black Swan had flown up to the Round Pond. He was preening on the gravel strip.

A young Grey Heron enjoyed a climb in the purple loosestrife on the Serpentine island.

Pigeon Eater and his mate were having a moment of peace on the roof of the Dell restaurant ...

... when their youngster burst in on the scene, whining as usual.

A Blue Tit beside the Long Water ate a larva it had found in a holly tree and went off to look for more.

A Robin in the corkscrew hazel in the Flower Walk was expecting pine nuts.

So was the usual female Chaffinch, who appeared near Mount Gate.

A Carrion Crow at the Round Pond had found a discarded chicken bone from someone's KFC box.

A Jackdaw waited for a peanut.

Three young Pied Wagtails were hunting on the grass.

It's generally Wood Pigeons you see flapping and lurching in trees with berries, but today it was a Feral Pigeon in a pyracantha tree in the Flower Walk.