There are four Tawny owlets. We had been wondering whether their parents, who have now been breeding for a decade, would still be able to produce four, especially during the recent atrocious weather -- and the answer is a triumphant yes. Here is one of them, in a tree just to the north of the northern edge of the Flower Walk where the adults have been for several days. The others were disposed in adjacent trees.

However, one of the owlets had a narrow escape just after noon today. It was being harassed by various corvids (Carrion Crows, Magpies and Jays) and was knocked out of its tree and fluttered to the ground, where it was attacked by a dog. Luckily Des was on the scene and grabbed the bird and put it behind the railings of the Flower Walk. His hand was deeply scratched by its razor-sharp claws, but it was an honourable wound, and at least he avoided the fate of Eric Hosking the wildlife photographer, who lost an eye to an angry Tawny Owl. Here the owlet is sitting behind the railings recovering from the shock.

When I came past the spot a couple of hours later it had gone. It may not have been able to fly too well, though obviously these birds can fly, as they are 300 yards from their nest. But owls of all ages are skilled climbers, and no doubt it had gone up the nearest tree trunk. In fact none of the owlets was visible when I returned, and they may have retreated into the hollow sweet chestnut tree where they were first found.

When I left, the male owl was being buzzed by an angry Mistle Thrush. An owl's life is not an easy one. Here is a fine picture of the female of the pair taken by Chris Hinton, who managed to see the whole bird. When I have visited them they have always been partly hidden in the leaves of the evergreen trees they have chosen for this year's day roost.

There were two pairs of Teal on the lake yesterday, and this morning Des saw one pair flying from the Long Water to the Serpentine. I went round the lake looking for them, but they must have been in good cover as I didn't find them.

The Northern Wheatear is still on the Parade Ground, for the fifth day. And there are still plenty of Redwing and a few Fieldfares here, generally north of the bandstand.

I came home through St James's Park and was surprised to see three Little Grebes, all fishing in open water and being harried by gulls. I haven't seen any Little Grebes on the Long Water for a week now. I wonder whether they have deserted us for the other park.

Update: Two Little Grebes reported to be still present in our park.

Further update: Revisited the Tawny Owls at 7.30 pm, as darkness was falling. One adult visible. The whole area was resounding with the chipping of cross Blackbirds and the whirring of infuriated Mistle Thrushes.

Both the adult Tawny Owls were visible from the north side of the Flower Walk, in the same place as yesterday. Here is the female: she is more wakeful than her mate, and when you look at her she looks back at you.

When I passed the sweet chestnut tree where the owlets are at 7.45 am I could hear them calling, but none of them came out. I came by later, when some other people had arrived, but the owlets still hadn't emerged. They have no particular reason to come out of their comfortable shelter. There is a Starlings' nest in an upper branch of this tree, and a pair were carrying nesting materials into the hole.

The Little Owl had come out of his usual sweet chestnut tree near the leaf yard, and was sunbathing on a branch, looking very fine in the clear sunlight. It's a grand day when you can see two different kinds of owl.

It seems likely that the pair are nesting in this tree, since the bird is constantly on it. If so, this is the male of the pair and his mate remains inside. He seems to have recovered at least partly from his fear of humans, induced last year when some nasty children threw stones at him, and he stared boldly at me with his intense yellow eyes while I took a series of photographs.

To the west of this area there are several Nuthatch and Treecreeper territories. As yet they are not actively nesting, but this Nuthatch was singing on a branch.

The male of the pair of Dunnocks at the Lido was also singing.

There are still at least 30 Redwings at the southern end of the Parade Ground, feeding in the grass and flying around the trees. I didn't find the Wheatear, which is not to say that he wasn't there.

One of the adult Tawny Owls seen today is certainly the male of the usual pair from the familiar nest tree. His round face and pot-bellied figure are quite distinctive.

Here is a guide to finding the family. From the Albert Memorial, walk north a few yards till you emerge in the open park. Then look to the northwest and you will see this.

The tree marked 'Adult' is about halfway along the section of the Flower Walk between the memorial and the crossing of the path from Queen's Gate -- this crossing is shut at present and you can only enter the Flower Walk from the memorial end. The tree is the tallest one in that section of the path, and is some kind of evergreen with lanceolate leaves -- see picture in Wednesday's blog post. The best place to see the adult owl or owls will probably be from the north side of the tree, but it is also worth going along the Flower Walk to look from the other side.

The tree marked 'Owlets' is one of the old sweet chestnut trees planted in 1690. It is hollow from top to bottom and full of holes. The owlets have mostly stayed inside, and no more than one has emerged at a time. However, you can hear others.

One of the male Northern Wheatears remains on the part of the Parade Ground that is being resurfaced. Today he was moving around in the area to the south of the heaps of soil. He is very active and you will probably first spot him running or flying.

There are still plenty of Redwings and a few Fieldfares at the south end of the Parade Ground, prospecting for worms and bugs in the freshly laid turf. I would have expected them to prefer older grassed areas, but evidently they know what they are doing.

The two Mute Swans on the Long Water were exploring a nest site on the east side, on the bank below the bench dedicated to Rudolf Steiner.

There were again a lot of Pied Wagtails on the south side of the Serpentine, mostly around the Lido.

On the Serpentine a pair of Lesser Black-Backed Gulls were courting on a pedalo.

The first Tawny owlet has been seen, in a tree just to the north of the Flower Walk a few yards west from the crossing with the path from the Albert Memorial. This fine picture was taken by Paul Turner.

When I arrived a few minutes later it was already snowing and the owlet had turned his face to the tree. This was the only owlet we actually saw, but some Magpies were protesting at a laurel bush nearby on the north side of the Flower Walk border, and we think there were some more owlets in the bush.

Both parents were in the tall evergreen tree whose leaves I photographed yesterday (and I still don't know what kind of tree it is), about 50 yards west of the Albert Memorial path crossing. They were partly visible from the north side of the Flower Walk, but not from the central path of the walk. Here is the best picture I could manage of one of them, taken in terrible light and falling snow.

Since these owls have owlets, there can be little doubt that they are the familar couple from earlier years, well to the south of their usual area and taking advantage of the shelter of the many evergreen trees in the Flower Walk.

One of the Northern Wheatears was still visible on the Parade Ground, flying around very actively but tending to shelter underneath trees. Again, this is one of Paul's pictures, taken at a considerable distance.

As the weather worsened, the bird flew off in the direction of the shrubbery around the Lookout, probably to take shelter.

There were about 25 Redwings, fewer visible than yesterday, and a few Fieldfares. Mostly they stayed around the southern end of the Parade Ground. They were extremely shy even by the standards of Redwings, and flew away in a flock if approached.

In contrast, this Mistle Thrush near the Serpentine Gallery was quite phlegmatic about being photographed.

It is one of a pair nesting in a row of lime trees, though probably nesting is on hold until the vile weather improves a bit.

Yesterday's Tawny Owl was in the Flower Walk again. There are several evergreen trees along this path, and it has been seen in several of them: yews, an ilex, and today it was in whatever this is -- I am hopeless at trees, so I just picked some leaves to photograph. It is a tall, bushy tree on the north side of the path, about 50 yards from crossing with the path from the Albert Memorial.

The owl stays deep in the foliage and is hard to see and impossible to photograph. Nor, of course, do we know whether it is our familiar owl from the nest tree beyond the Physical Energy statue. Some people from the Royal College of Art, just the other side of Kensington Road, report having heard a Tawny Owl hooting several times in the past months, so it may be another bird altogether.

There were two male Northern Wheatears on the Parade Ground this morning between the area where the grass is being renovated and Park Lane. They were moving up and down the edge of the park between Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch. When I went there, unfortunately I couldn't find them, so I can't offer you a picture. This is not much of a day for photographs, I am afraid. There were, however, about 40 Redwing in the area along with a few Fieldfares, some feeding on the grass and others in the surrounding trees.

The long-running dispute about ownership of the nest at the east end of the Serpentine continues. Here a couple of Mallards have claimed it from the Coots that have recntly been occupying it. However, these ducks would not be serious about nesting in such an exposed position.

The three speckled Canada-Greylag hybrid geese, who are certainly siblings, have been going around together since they arrived. But now they have made friends with an unrelated hybrid, the one on the left in this picture.

On the whole, Canada-Greylag hybrids associate with Greylags; they always have Greylag mothers and are imprinted on them. And on the whole they seem to be accepted by the others. However, it does seem that they have some sense of not being quite the same, which has led to the formation of this little group of different geese.

This morning at 6 am Dave the gardener saw an adult Tawny Owl in the Flower Walk just north of the Albert Memorial. No one is sure whether this is one of the familiar owls from the nest tree 300 yards to the north, or whether it is another owl. Subsequently several people searched for the bird, but no one has found it again yet. It may be spending the day in an ilex tree on the edge of the Flower Walk about 50 yards west of the crossing at the back of the memorial. This tree's dense evergreen foliage could completely hide any number of owls.

It was a pleasant day, the first for some time. Here a Moorhen wanders among the spring daffodils in Kensington Gardens.

This Coot in the Serpentine is eating a bunch of sprouting wheat.

These bunches of are left over from the celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, which occurs on the day of the spring equinox, this year on 20 April. They are a symbol of the rebirth of nature. Originally a Zoroastrian festival, Nowruz is now celebrated widely. After the plants have grown for some days they are thrown into water, and today they are all round the edge of the lake.

Another sign of spring: this Carrion Crow is gathering fallen feathers to line its nest.

So are pairs of Long-Tailed Tits, though I have not managed to get a picture of one actually carrying a feather so far this year: this one was just perched low down in a bush scanning the ground.

Long-Tailed Tits perform an immense amount of work gathering materials for their large spherical nests; maybe 20,000 feathers are needed for the lining. The outside of the nest is a composite of spiders' webs for tensile strength and moss as a filler and insulator. You may be lucky enough to see one of these birds collecting cobwebs from the ceiling of the pedestrian tunnels at each end of the Serpentine bridge.

April was ushered in by a raw morning with a chilling east wind. There were at least 30 Herring Gulls on the Serpentine -- not the most exciting of photographic subjects, but this picture does show young gulls of two years. The first year ones are uniformly speckled, and the second year ones have adult grey feathers beginning to appear on their backs.

There was a great deal of noise on the Serpentine island as several pairs of Canada Geese displayed to endear themselves to their mates and deter the others.

They are now so ubiquitous as to be thought of as a pest, but it was not always so. Thomas Bewick's great work British Birds (1797-1804) comments: 'This is another useful species which has been reclaimed from a state of nature, and domesticated ... it is also accounted a great ornament on ponds near gentlemen's seats.'

Of the bird in its native habitat of North America, the book continues, '[They] are also said, at certain seasons, to darken the air like a cloud, and to spread themselves over the lakes and swamps in innumerable multitudes.' It was a while before the British realised that the same thing might happen here.

The two Mandarins on the Serpentine remain in the area between the bridge and the Diana memorial, astounding visitors who have not seen the male's fantastic plumage before. As soon as someone appears with what seems to be a bag of food they nip briskly ashore to collect their toll. These ducks are also descended from ornamental collections and have gone feral. There are a lot of them on the Regent's Canal, where they breed successfully.

A Wood Pigeon was enjoying a bathe at the Lido. This is a native species, of course, but its numbers are increasing rapidly at present.

Still no trace of any Tawny Owls, despite several people searching all over the likely area. The last time one of the adults was seen was on 17 February. The Little Owl also obstinately remained inside the chestnut tree.