A beautiful sunny morning, and the grass around the Ranger's Lodge garden is a carpet of snowdrops.

A pair of Rose-Ringed Parakeets inspected a possible nest hole.

A pair of Long-Tailed Tits were flying around a bush in the Rose Garden where they nested last year.

A Grey Heron supervised its mate building a nest.

A Robin found an ambitiously large worm in fallen leaves. Robins bite worms into shorter lengths so they can swallow them.

A Carrion Crow picked insects out of a rotten twig.

A Starling took advantage of an archangel at the top of the Albert Memorial.

One of the Peregrines was on the tower. I think it's the male but it's hard to tell from this angle, and it wouldn't turn round.

The Bar-Headed x Greylag hybrid was preening at the Lido.

A pair of Gadwalls got on with their quiet life, against a soundtrack of noisy geese.

The Red-Crested Pochard was under the dead willow nest to the Italian Garden. His Mallard mate was somewhere else, so there was no need for him to fluff his head up to impress her.

Black-Headed Gulls looked for worms on the edge of the temporary pond made by the floods in the Meadow.

Although it's wide it isn't deep. A policeman and his horse amused themselves by splashing through the middle.

The Serpentine Gallery is closed by the Great Panic,  so its deserted terrace is a good place to practise and film a little dance routine. They needed several takes to get it right.

 The day started with sunny intervals, picking out the colours of a Starling in the leaf yard.

A pair of Egyptian Geese sat comfortably on a sawn-off tree.

Two Robins beside the Long Water, separate all winter, haven't paired up again yet but at least they have stopped trying to kill each other.

Song Thrushes have started singing all around the Long Water.

Another finely marked Feral Pigeon like the one I photographed yesterday. It was preening beside the Serpentine. Pigeon fanciers give all the colour varieties names, and this one is called Blue Grizzle.

A Long-Tailed Tit was waiting for a place at at the feeder in the Dell.

A Great Tit waited for me to feed it at the bridge.

Drizzle started around noon, then developed into heavy rain. Blackbirds welcome rain, which brings up worms ...

... and so do Mistle Thrushes ...

... but Jays look sad and bedraggled.

A Grey Heron was sitting down in the nest at the west end of the island. I've seen it sitting here several times now. Hard to tell whether it's beginning to get broody.

A heron posed among the urns in the Italian Garden.

The Moorhens here produced two broods last summer. An older one now has a red and yellow bill almost as bright as its parent's ...

... but a younger one is still in drab teenage colours.

Mute Swans toiled to gain height to fly over the bridge.

A Mistle Thrush sang from the top of a tall tree near Queen's Gate.

The Song Thrush in the leaf yard was also singing, unfortunately against the noise of the generator which seems to run permanently and ruins any video shot within half a mile of it.

The same with a Robin singing beautifully on the other side of the Long Water. Maybe they'll shut the damned machine down at the weekend.

Neil got a good shot of his favourite Coal Tit in a variegated holly bush near the Albert Memorial.

Only a single Long-Tailed Tit visited the Dell briefly ...

... because Starlings were hogging the feeder.

There was a prettily marked Feral Pigeon at the Lido.

Both the Peregrines were on the tower, as usual an antisocial distance apart.

Only one Grey Heron was in a nest on the island, the one at the far east end.

Two Cormorants were searching for fish inside the semicircular wall of the old water filter at the edge of the Italian Garden. One of them stared crossly at a couple of Canada Geese that were in its way.

They didn't catch anything, as they have already pretty much fished out this area, and they annoyed a Grey Heron which was fishing quietly in its different style.

The Heron went away. No chance of getting anything with those two splashing about.

The pair of Egyptian Geese that live around the Henry Moore sculpture were bothered by an intruding Egyptian. Their display from the top of the sculpture had no effect, so they came down and confronted it through the railings.

A Pochard was diving around the wire baskets under the bridge. There are probably small snails on the wire mesh, which all the waterfowl like.

On the other side of the Albert Hall from the Albert Memorial there's another Albert memorial, commemorating his role in setting up the Great Exhibition of 1851. Albert, dressed rather oddly in Elizabethan style, stands on a pink granite column.

Like the better known memorial, it's surrounded by figures representing the four economically important continents -- aptly enough, as it was the world's first international exhibition. Here is Miss Africa.

A Song Thrush was in full voice near the leaf yard, though it's a pity about the noise from the machinery, a busy place at this time of year with dead leaves being piled up and composted.

This is the male of the pair of Coal Tits at the bridge, shyer than his mate but he can be induced to come down to the railings to take food.

The Long-Tailed Tits at the feeders in the Dell have become easy to photograph, but that's no reason to stop taking pictures.

The same with the Robin that perches on the bench in the Rose Garden.

The birds in the park are usually not interested in citrus fruit, but segments of an extra sweet mandarin orange got a cautious examination by one Carrion Crow, and enthusiasm from another crow and a Coot.

Sweet corn is a popular food with the waterfowl -- Greylag and Canada Geese and Mute Swans here. And of course the inevitable Feral Pigeons butt in.

A small girl picked some grass and threw it into the water for a Greylag Goose, which happily ate it.

A Herring Gull got a chapati. They can't complain about having a monotonous diet.

The pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gull chased a young Herring Gull off his patch.

The female Peregrine was on the barracks tower in the morning.

The Grey Herons' nests on the north side of the island were all empty. One heron stood on the gate. There is going to be a lot of stopping and starting before they nest properly, though elsewhere nesting is in full swing.

The fluctuating number of fish in the lake may have something to do with the herons' delays here, but the fact that there are still Cormorants on the lake suggests that there's still enough for them to eat and feed their young.

The Coots' nest on the post at Peter Pan was smaller than it was yesterday. Coots' nest that are not on solid foundations always subside -- this one is balanced on a chain -- but the rate at which this is going down shows that the pair didn't get the foundations right. They are unusually incompetent for Coots, which are usually skilled nest builders.

A female Pochard left the flock on the Long Water and came on to the Serpentine for a quiet time.

The Red-Crested Pochard trio were bustling about in the Italian Garden as usual. The new Mallard drake does look rather odd with the lack of the usual dark brown front.

This is the first video I've got this year of a Blackbird singing, though he struggled to be heard over the noise of the traffic crossing the bridge.

There are definitely more Blackbirds to be seen than a couple of months ago. There was another in the Rose Garden ...

... and one under the young deodar on the lawn between there and the Dell. This area is ankle deep in wet mud, and it was quite difficult to get this modest picture.

There was a Robin higher up in the same tree ...

... and another on a sprinkler in the Dell ...

... where as usual Long-Tailed Tits were visiting the feeders.

A Pied Wagtail flew over several times chattering, but the only place it settled was on the edge of the Dell restaurant terrace, where I got a very distant shot of it just clear enough to show that it had picked up a larva.

A Grey Heron was busy adding twigs to the nest at the west end of the island.

Another perched on the remains of the Mute Swans' nesting island in the Long Water. The herons are looking their best at this time of year.

The pair of Herring Gulls at the east end of the Serpentine did the 'great call' and exchanged affectionate moans, and the male nattered irritably at a Mute Swan that he didn't want on his territory.

A Black-Headed Gull won a bit of bread and was chased by others, two Common Gulls and a young Herring Gull.

Two Cormorants preened on the big poplar that fell into the Long Water a few years ago. Health and safety regulations make it next to impossible to remove fallen trees from the lake, which is annoying for the park keepers who want a tidy park but just fine for birds.

A Great Crested Grebe rested on the Serpentine. You can see that he is a male by the wide V shape of his fine new crest.

The remains of a Paper Wasp nest in a dead Chinese Privet tree at the northwest corner of the bridge. However, the plentiful wasps that visited the fatsia bush just down the slope from here were all Common Wasps.