A soggy grey day

It was a dismal day of drizzle interspersed with heavier rain. A bedraggled Magpie with a tattered tail sheltered under the table on the Lido restaurant terrace.

The local Robin, which has always been very shy, was on the steps of the upper level of the restaurant but turned and fled the moment it saw me.

A Wren was much bolder and came out from the shelter of the big leaves of an arum lily to perch on a rail.

Wrens could be heard all round the lake. This one was in a bramble patch beside the Long Water.

The female Little Owl was understandably staying in her hole. (It's always practically the same picture, I know, but a day without an owl is sadly incomplete.)

A Grey Heron preened on a branch. A bit of moisture on the feathers makes them easier to preen.

The pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gull was stalking around with lunch on his mind.

The odd couple of a Lesser Black-Back and a Herring Gull moaned fondly at each other near the Triangle car park.

As usual, the Black-Headed Gull EZ73323 was on his post.

But I don't think I've seen this one with the plastic ring Yellow 2F12 before. This is a ring of the North Thames Gull Group, who do much of their work at the unlovely Pitsea landfill site in Basildon, where the gulls go to breed. I've reported it but don't expect to see a very thrilling history.

A Cormorant vainly tried to dry its wings in the rain.

This is the youngest Great Crested Grebe chick from the east end of the Serpentine island, still far from fully grown. It was with its parents, who were having a territorial dispute with the pair from the other end of the island.

Filmed a few days ago when it was sunny: a panorama of the Long Water with countless Coots. There were no Coots in Central London till the early 1920s, when the staff of St James's Park thought it would be a nice idea to have some and put Coot eggs in the nests of the local Moorhens. Now they have bred out of control and are all over the place.

A single female Gadwall cropped algae off the concrete edge of the lake. 

She doesn't know that in the Italian Garden there is a lone drake who would be very pleased to see her.

Another lone duck, a Shoveller drake near the island for some reason separated from the group on the Long Water.

This sign pointing towards the Winter Wasteland could be taken in another sense.

The male Little Owl at the Round Pond is back

The male Little Owl at the Round Pond hadn't been seen for some time, but today he was on a branch of the dead tree where the pair nest.

Alerted by Belinda Davie, I went to the Serpentine Gallery to look for an owl in the lime tree. The female was there, but not showing well.

A Jay waited on a branch in a nearby tree.

Another was searching for worms and insects in the fallen leaves beside Rotten Row.

Feral Pigeons bathed in the new marble bowl of the restored Huntress fountain.

The dominant Robin in the Flower Walk posed grandly on a stump ...

... and the male Chaffinch looked out of the leaves.

The Grey Wagtail was back on the edge of the Serpentine by the Lido restaurant terrace.

The Peregrines were on their ledge on the tower.

The old Grey Heron stood on the lawn under the Henry Moore sculpture.

Cormorants vied for places on the posts at the Peter Pan waterfront. A Common Gull was evicted.

There were nine on the raft in the Long Water ...

... and nine Shovellers were revolving in a group.

The Mute Swan family were preening at the Vista while they waited for some mug to turn up with a bag of bread.

The Egyptian pair in the Italian Garden made the most of the sunshine on a chilly day. They are a long way from the warmth of their native Africa.

A monk stood with his staff in silent meditation on the worldly folly of the Winter Wasteland.

Little Owl back in sight at the Serpentine Gallery

A Little Owl has reappeared at the Serpentine Gallery, where Belinda Davie spotted it and took this pleasing picture. I missed it because I had given up looking for the owls here after several weeks of drawing a blank. This is certainly a male owl, as you can tell from its slim build and big eyebrows, but is it the male of the pair that bred here or their offspring, who was beginning to look exactly like his father when last seen?

A chilly wind kept the female owl at the Round Pond in her hole.

A Grey Wagtail looked for insects at the edge of the Serpentine by the Lido restaurant. This is quite a young bird, still without an adult's dark bib. It's been seen several times around the lake.

On the restaurant terrace this Starling with one leg is a regular visitor. It has no difficulty scavenging, but it can't run around in the grass with the others so it's mostly dependent on human leavings.

A Feral Pigeon is usually seen lying on an arm of one of the benches in the Flower Walk. I suspect that it's also disabled, but didn't want to scare it away to check.

A pair of Jays are now regularly turning up to be fed near the Queen's Temple.

Ahmet Amerikali got a fine picture of a Goldcrest in the bushes near the Lido, not a place where I've seen or heard one myself but there must be a lot unnoticed in every shrubbery where there are evergreens.

A young Herring Gull was playing with a coffee cup, an interesting toy because it could be made to roll.

Another was eating a bit of apple, a popular treat for many kinds of birds. This is a third-year bird with just a trace of tweedy juvenile plumage remaining on its wings.

And this one has been occupying the landing stage at the Diana fountain for several days ...

... to the annoyance of the resident Black-Headed Gull, who was in the water looking disgruntled.

A Cormorant dozed on a post at Peter Pan.

Another picture by Ahmet: the female Great Crested Grebe from the bridge having a bit of flying practice.

One of their young ones was fishing at Peter Pan.

I think one other has survived the dangerous transition to independence, as I have seen a young grebe fishing on the Serpentine. We don't know what happened to the young from the nest farther up the Long Water, as the whole family left as soon as they could fly.

The Pochard x Tufted Duck hybrid was hanging around with the Tufted Ducks on the Long Water. At the end of the video, a pure Pochard for comparison. The hybrid is darker with a two-tone body, and and has interesting  marmalade-coloured eyes.

A group of Shovellers spun as they scooped up small aquatic creatures with their enormous bills. These contain bristles which sieve solids out of the water in the same way as the filters of baleen whales.

A different air ambulance from the usual London two landed on Buck Hill.

It's an Agusta-Westland 169 belonging to the Essex and Herts Air Ambulance Service, which has been operating since 2017. They are getting a second one, and also have an MD902 Explorer similar to the London ones. The AW169 has a high-set tail rotor and a large horizontal stabiliser to keep people away from it, essential when there are rescuers on the ground who could walk into a normal tail rotor and get shredded. The MD902 manages this more elegantly by not having a tail rotor at all, relying on an air blast circulating around a cylindrical tail to create sideways thrust with the mysterious Coanda effect.

After a sunny day there was a brief shower as I was coming home, producing a rainbow which did its best to make the Dana Centre in Queen's Gate look less hideous. Richard Henry Dana, who wrote Two Years Before the Mast in 1840, would have been appalled to find this great lump named after him.

A new hybrid duck

On a chilly day the small birds were glad to come down for pine nuts. The video from the Flower Walk shows a Blue Tit, several Great Tits, and the belligerent Robin who chases all the other birds.

Long-Tailed Tits passed through the Rose Garden ...

... and a Robin sang in a bush.

A Wren is often seen in this bush in the leaf yard, an unusually visible perch because the scrub in front of it has been cut down.

A Jay yawned as it waited for me to produce a peanut.

The female Little Owl at the Round Pond didn't want to come out in the keen wind.

The female Peregrine, by herself again on the tower, spread her mighty wings.

The pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gull hungrily eyed a Feral Pigeon sauntering past. Pigeons can get quite close to him as long as they stay alert, because they can take off faster than he can run at them.

A young Lesser Black-Back played with a leaf.

A Grey Heron stood in a bush beside the Vista.

This is probably a Pochard x Tufted Duck hybrid. We had two several years ago but I haven't seen them for some time, so probably this is a new one. It was at the Lido.

These Canada x Greylag hybrids at the Vista are so alike that they must be siblings. Hybrids come out in all kinds of colours and patterns and it would be most unusual for two unrelated ones to be so similar.

Greylag Geese like apples.

A pair of Egyptians flew past the Mute Swan family at the Triangle car park.

A hardy Buff-Tailed Bumblebee braved the chill and fed on a Baby Sage flower in the Rose Garden.

The arbutus tree in the Rose Garden has produced some pretty fruit. It's also known as the 'strawberry tree'. The fruit looks only slightly like a strawberry but has an insipid strawberry-like flavour. Its botanical name is Arbutus unedo, the second name dubious Latin for 'eat once', since if you eat one you don't particularly want another. People make them into jam, but you can make anything into jam if you use enough sugar.