Black-Headed Gulls are now returning in serious numbers, and will be with us till next spring. As soon as they see anyone feeding birds at the lakeside they flock to the scene uttering the loud sardonic cries that have given them the species name ridibundus, 'the one who laughs a lot'.

My friend, and the former head of the Royal Parks Wildlife Group, Roy Sanderson comes to the lake in winter to ring these gulls, and exchanges information with other bird ringers and interested people about their movements. It isn't easy to read a ring on a gull because the aluminium rings are small and the stamped letters not sharply defined. You sometimes see birdwatchers with powerful scopes looking along this line of posts opposite the Peter Pan statue, hoping that a gull will turn around so that they can read the other half of the number on the ring. If any reader should be lucky enough to see a complete number on any gull, please post it on the comments on this blog. Whatever it is, Roy will be interested, and might have a bit of that bird's history to relate, which of course I would publish here.

Roy also ringed one of the Ring-Necked Parakeets, shown here.

The aggrieved bird bit his finger to the bone, and he had to rush off to the Lido restaurant, bleeding copiously, to beg a plaster from the staff. This experiment will not be repeated. The parakeet has now recovered her composure and, when she is here, often comes down to eat peanuts off my hand. She has never bitten me.

The seven Mute Swan cygnets from the Lido have now grown quite large, and are well practised at scrounging food off the park visitors, who are happy to comply.

But soon they will be too large to be considered cute, and will have to fend for themselves.

One of the Little Owls was calling from the usual sweet chestnut tree near the leaf yard, completely hidden by the foliage.

A few Black-Headed Gulls have returned from their breeding territories, but there are only about half a dozen at present. The large gulls are still keeping to the Serpentine, and the gang of three Lesser Black-Backed Gulls that are usually on the Long Water were the other side of the bridge near the Lido. Their absence has allowed the Mallards to bring out their broods, and I saw four on the Long Water. One of them has four ducklings now almost large enough to be out of danger.

Apart from this it was a typical lazy summer day with traditional English summer drizzle. Large bands of Wood Pigeons are roaming around the long grass in Kensington Gardens.

The Great Crested Grebe family were out of sight again round the back of the Serpentine island. The grebe nest on the Long Water was still occupied, so clearly the birds here are serious about nesting. But the other grebes were just hanging around and dozing, something that they do superbly.

After a while the weather cleared up and people started sitting at the tables outside the Lido restaurant. Cue for a large crowd of Starlings to line up on the roof ready to launch raids on the tables.

The people at the restaurant have put out a machine which every now and then plays back the alarm calls of various birds. The birds take absolutely no notice. It is an American device and maybe the calls are wrong, or maybe these intelligent and persistent creatures have rumbled the deception.

There seem to be no Ring-Necked Parakeets in the park at all at present. Probably they have left London for the summer and are busy eating some farmer's crops.

The Great Crested Grebe family at the Serpentine island have come back into sight after having to hide around the other side of the island because of the Grey Herons. Here their mother, sheltering under the stern of a boat, sees their father coming with something in his beak ...

 ... but it is not food, only a feather.

However, grebes, young and old, eat feathers to prevent their insides from being injured by fishbones, so one of the chicks is glad to take it.

Not much action otherwise as life quietens down for high summer. A few birds are still singing: I heard a Chiffchaff, a Blackcap, a Chaffinch and a Song Thrush.

On the edge of the pool in front of the Rima memorial a Carrion Crow was feeding a young bird.

The relief of Rima, by Jacob Epstein, commemorates the naturalist W.H. Hudson, whose contribution to the list of birds in the park is mentioned in the right column of this blog.

He was also a co-founder of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1889. The monument describes him as a 'Writer and Field Naturalist', and the fact that he is commemorated here is largely due to his fame as the author of the bestselling romantic novel Green Mansions (1904). In this rather daft book, Rima is a wild nature girl who lives deep in the Venezuelan rain forest, dresses in spider webs and can talk to the birds -- and here she is, surrounded by her friends. Evidently she has taken off her web dress to bathe. Despite its fashionable rain forest setting the book is forgotten today, but if you want to read it you can find the complete text online here.

At last there is a Great Crested Grebes' nest on the Long Water, the first this year. The emergence of young fish in reasonable numbers has finally persuaded them to start breeding, and it is not too late. However, it is in a crazy place, on the tip of a dead poplar tree that fell into the lake several years ago in a violent storm (I saw it fall). Not sure it can succeed in such an exposed spot. Heaven knows why the birds chose it when there are many excellent sites vacant around the edge . This place had a Coots' nest originally, which is why the nest is higher than the low, slummy platform that grebes usually build. But you can see that they have made it their own by draping it with algae.

Meanwhile on the Serpentine island, a crowd of Grey Herons near the first grebes' nest has persuaded them to take their chicks round to the south side of the island. I saw a parent and two chicks from across the lake. This does not mean that the third chick has been lost. When their young are large enough to keep up with their parents, grebes often look after one or two each.

The Coots nesting in the Italian Garden now have three eggs. Here the male bird bites neatly through a purple loosestrife stem to present to his mate for furnishing the nest. They will not stop until they have reduced the entire carefully planted clump to ruins.

There is a Moorhens' nest with two chicks in the Dell. I had watched this being started, but reckoned that the Grey Herons who often visit the Dell would soon destroy it. Good to be proved wrong.

The young Mistle Thrush from the nest year the Serpentine Gallery is out and about, chasing its parents to be fed. It has much more pattern to the feathers on its back than an adult. 

The Coots nesting in the wire netting in the Italian garden pond now have two eggs, with more to come if they can keep out of harm's way.

I was wrong about them flying into the enclosure. They climb up the netting, balance on top for a moment, and jump off the other side. You would not think that their large fringed toes would be able to get a grip on the mesh, but they manage somehow.

This does not solve the problem of getting the chicks out, unless these are hatched with the same kind of climbing ability. However, coot chicks have huge feet. And I have seen moorhen chicks jump and climb remarkably well, when there was a nest inside the Serpentine outflow under the path, and they had to get up a small stone wall with a waterfall flowing over it to leave the nest.

Farther down the same waterfall today, a Mallard was poking around for something edible, having some difficulty keeping her foothold in the torrent. Shortly after I took this picture her foot slipped and she was deposited ignominiously at the bottom of the waterfall, quacking crossly.

The Dunnocks in the shrubbery near the Lido ticket office have a family. I had been keeping an eye on this area, which has been a Dunnock territory for years, and today I heard squeaking from inside a bush, and out they came and perched on the wall of the Lido play area. From left to right, they are two young birds and an adult. 

The Coots in the Italian Garden have abandoned their unsuccessful nest in the irises, and have made a new nest in a clump of mixed water plants in another of the ponds, which they will no doubt trash to the irritation of the gardeners.

The clump had been surrounded by wire mesh expressly to keep them out, but they just flew in over the top. It is not clear how or whether the nest is going to work. Very young chicks could squeeze through the holes in the wire netting, but when they grow larger they will be stuck inside or out. I don't think that the parents could unpick the mesh -- unlike Ring-Necked Parakeets, whose strong beaks and ingenuity make light of the stuff. Probably the Coots have not given much thought to the problem.

A few of the Greylag Geese have now completely regrown their wing feathers. The rest will not be far behind.

Here is a Blackbird enjoying a bath in a puddle left by last night's rain.

The Great Crested Grebe family from the Serpentine island have emerged from the shelter of the wire baskets, and for the first time it was possible to see that there are three chicks. Two of them can be seen riding on their parent's back, and the top of the third one's head is just visible on the far side of the right-hand chick.

Carrying babies around makes a dreadful mess of the parents' wing feathers, but they moult them soon afterwards and grow fresh ones while they are still lake-bound looking after their young and do not need to fly.

In the swimming area at the Lido, four large men were thrashing up and down the length of the buoyed-off area. In the midst of them a grebe was unconcernedly fishing. Perhaps the swimmers disturb the fish in a useful way that makes it easy for the bird to catch them. It is quite fast enough in the water to be sure of dodging flailing human arms and legs.

A Reed Warbler flew up from the reeds near the bridge and landed in a nearby oak tree, where it hopped briskly around in the foliage, presumably hunting for insects.

Young Carrion Crows have emerged. Here, one struts about jauntily on the edge of the Serpentine. Juvenile birds have blue eyes and look slimmer than adults as they have not yet grown the thick mane of feathers round the neck which gives an adult crow its characteristic shape.

Here another two young crows beg noisily for food.

Update: Peter Tang reports seeing a Great Black-Backed Gull. I missed this myself. Here is a picture of one I took in 2008. They are very large indeed, and have pinkish-grey legs like Herring Gulls rather than the yellow legs of Lesser Black-Backs.