The Great Crested Grebes nesting against the baskets at the island have at least one new chick.

The pair on the Long Water let their chicks have a swim. The third was on its parent's back and I couldn't get a picture of all three at once.

A pair of Moorhens with two chicks ate duckweed under the parapet of the Italian Garden. You can hear the six fountains in the garden.

A Moorhen enjoyed a vigorous wash on the edge of the Serpentine.

The Mallard at Peter Pan still has six ducklings.

The Egyptians with seven goslings were feeding under the trees on the south side of the Serpentine.

The family of six were on the other side of the lake, playing in the shallow water.

The female Kestrel has been quite hard to find recently, but today she was perched in a plane tree .near the Italian Garden.

The Little Owl near the Albert Memorial was calling from an oak tree just to the east of her usual one.

There was a lot of insect activity. The Red-Eyed Damselflies on the algae in the Italian Garden fountain all got the same idea at once, and were mating frantically.

Update: These may be Small Red-Eyed Damselflies rather than the larger species, since the small ones were seen the following day. The video is not close enough to distinguish the species.

Common Blue Damselflies were also mating in a more sedate fashion on the edge of the Serpentine.

So were some Black-Tailed Skimmer dragonflies.

The female flew along the edge of the lake, stitching eggs into the algae.

This female on Buck Hill wasn't doing anything, but she is too beautiful to omit.

On the other side of the path a Comma butterfly settled on a leaf.

Ahmet Amerikali was in Southwark Park, and sent two good pictures. The Little Grebes have lost one chick but still have two.

And some Canada Geese have bred -- unlike any of those in the central London parks.

There are two Grey Heron chicks in the new nest on the island. This is the first time I have seen both of them.

The parent with a broken beak is managing to survive, I think only because people are feeding it.

The two young Moorhens from the nest under the platform of Bluebird Boats enjoy climbing around on the boats.

I saw a Coot carrying a twig into one of the baskets of water plants in the Italian Garden fountains ...

... and went over to investigate. They are building a nest in a clump of purple loosestrife.

The four young Coots at the Dell restaurant are still using their nest, but they are now so large that it's a bit of a squash when there's a parent as well.

The Coots at the bridge are showing ominous signs of wanting to breed again in this impossibly exposed place.

However, the nest at the bridge which the Coots laboriously repaired after a Mute Swan had squashed it is now deserted, and has been taken over by a Mallard.

The Mallard on the other side of the bridge is now down to three ducklings.

Three teenage Egyptian Geese sprawled on the edge of the Serpentine.

The young Pied Wagtail was back at the Lido restaurant, and found a small larva.

A Blackbird sunbathed near the Serpentine Gallery.

Yesterday, BlueTit put a comment on the blog saying that he had seen a Tawny Owl chick in an owl box near the Physical Energy statue. I thought this must be the owl box on the horse chestnut tree next to the Tawnies' old tree, and went there to see what was going on. I stayed there for a while but there was no sign of activity. The box shows signs of wear, but it's probably from squirrels.

The only bird I found here was a Treecreeper.

BlueTit said that the box was near the statue and towards the place where people feed the Rose-Ringed Parakeets -- which this owl box doesn't match well. However, between the statue and the parakeet zone there are only two tall trees, a horse chestnut and a plane, and I couldn't see an owl box on either. I'll go there towards sunset and listen.

Three pictures of insects in the wildflower patch behind the Lido: a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee on a cornflower ...

... a Common Carder on a flower that I can't identify ...

... and a Greenbottle fly on a marigold.

Two pairs of Great Crested Grebes had a territorial dispute on the Serpentine. As always, the faceoff ended with both pairs congratulating each other.

The pair on the Long Water have three chicks, not two as I had thought. In this very distant picture they can be seen looking out from their mother's back while their father brings them a feather. Grebes eat quantities of feathers to wrap up spiky fishbones.

The six Greylag goslings on the Serpentine are growing quickly. They ate some reeds, found them tough, and came ashore to crop the grass, which is now scanty after being cropped by geese and trampled by humans.

Their flight feathers are beginning to grow, but it will be a while before they can fly.

 The Pochard with two ducklings appeared briefly at the Vista.

The Mallard at Peter Pan still has six ducklings.

One of the young Pied Wagtails was hunting on the edge of the terrace of the Lido restaurant, where spilt food attracts insects. It caught a Common Blue Damselfly, which was also there to catch smaller insects but found itself to be on the menu.

The Little Owl near the Albert Memorial could be seen in her usual oak tree.

A Magpie looked round in surprise as a Green Woodpecker, scared by a dog, flew over it.

A young Long-Tailed Tit looked out from a tree beside the Long Water.

A young Wren was making a loud fuss on a twig.

Ahmet Amerikali got a fine picture of a young Great Tit clamouring to be fed ...

... and also of a Whitethroat in the Rose Garden.

Conehead54 told me that there were Red-Veined Darter dragonflies at the Round Pond. I went there and found several.

Another good picture by Ahmet: a Honeybee on a knapweed flower.

I thought I was photographing a Honeybee on a bindweed flower, but it turns out to be a bee-mimicking hoverfly. I can't identify the species.

Another sunny day. A Blackbird sunbathed near the Rose Garden.

 The Little Owl basked in the oak tree near the Albert Memorial.

A Reed Warbler ventured out of the reed bed east of the Lido.

A family of Blue Tits bustled around a dead tree near the Henry Moore sculpture. Probably their nest is under a flake of peeling bark on the trunk.

A Great Crested Grebe fished quietly in the Serpentine.

The Coot family in the Long Water under the parapet of the Italian Garden were busy among the water weed. The half grown chick in the foreground is one of their first brood. You can hear the fountains of the Italian Garden.

One of the adults surfaced covered with water weed.

A Mallard near the bridge has three new ducklings.

And one at Peter Pan has six.

The Egyptian Geese with seven goslings are keeping them safely near the railings of the small boathouse.

But the pair at the Lido who originally had fourteen are now down to nine.

This Canada Goose with a speckled head comes to the Serpentine yearly to moult.

I'd always vaguely supposed that fish were like motorbikes, with no reverse gear. But I was wrong.

A Small Tortoiseshell butterfly rested on a nettle near the bridge.

A Black-Tailed Skimmer dragonfly perched on a twig beside the Serpentine. The blue dusting on its abdomen has mostly worn away. This coating is called pruination, from pruina, Latin for hoarfrost.

This female Blue-Tailed Damselfly has a pink thorax. This form is called rufescens, Latin for 'becoming reddish'. End of today's Latin lesson.

Long grass in Kensington Gardens waved in the breeze. The fluffy flower heads that give the field a purple-brown tint belong to Common Bent.

In his poem L'Allegro, Milton wrote of 'Russet lawns, and fallows gray, / Where the nibbling flocks do stray'. This is an early poem, written while he could still see. I've often wondered whether he was thinking of Common Bent, or whether he was red-green colourblind.

In the Rose Garden, a man was being painted to make him blend into the bench he was sitting on.

This curious pastime must be a tribute to the Chinese artist Liu Bolin, a master of invisibility -- see this picture.