Heron nests

Both the Grey Herons were on their nests on the island. The one with the red bill, still apparently waiting for its mate to turn up, needs to do a lot of work to build the nest up to a useful size. Both sexes collaborate with building, unlike storks where the male does all the work and builds a huge pile to impress the female.

As we saw yesterday there's already a pair on the other nest. Much less work is required here, as the nest has lasted quite well over the past year.

The remaining heron was standing indifferently on a basket. Maybe a mate will turn up. There's plenty of space for nesting.

A young heron, not yet in the mating game, fished by the landing stage.

The Great Crested Grebe family on the Serpentine were spread out. The male was resting near the nest site on the island ...

... the female was fishing near the boat hire platform ...

... and the young one was near the outflow. Its juvenile stripes seem to be lasting a long time, you'd expect them to have largely faded by now.

A Great Tit by the bridge delicately pecked little bites out of a pine nut.

A Coal Tit perched in a tree near the Albert Memorial.

A Robin sang in the Rose Garden ...

... and a Wren flitted about in the flower beds.

The Little Owl at the Round Pond was in her usual place, though it took two visits to see her.

A few yards away a clump of Oyster Mushrooms was growing on a fallen horse chestnut trunk.

The flower beds in the Rose Garden are planted with bulbs that are meant to come up in the spring. The squirrels know about this and nose around trying to locate them by smell and dig them up.

Some strange visitors were in the queue for the Winter Wasteland.

Herons and Handel

A pair of Grey Herons has just arrived on the Serpentine island and started building a nest. This may be the pair that nested successfully last January and fledged two young. The other herons here tend to hang around for months before they start.

They aren't easy to see through the twigs. A video may help slightly.

The heron with the red bill, which is claiming a nest site a few yards to the west, was down on the shore of the island ...

... and so was the other one which is usually seen on a patch or grass growing in one of the floating baskets.

A Pied Wagtail trotted around on the tarmac beside the lake. It seems unlikely that there's much to eat on this barren surface, so it was probably picking up grit.

A Moorhen wandered up the edge looking for anything edible -- and Moorhens will eat just about anything.

The very dark Great Crested Grebe has a mate. I hadn't seen the two together before. They were near the bridge, but are not the pair that nested here in the summer, which were on the Long Water.

At the east end of the lake the young Mute Swan from Regent's Park, in the foreground here, had been joined by one of the gang of five teenagers belonging to the killer swan. There was no sign of conflict -- so far.

Among the swans clustered here were the pair that nested on the island. The male has the ring 4FYG. Their single cygnet had to be taken away to the Swan Sanctuary to save it from the killer.

Pochards rested under a tree on the Long Water.

The Peregrines were on the barracks, perched far apart so they couldn't be photographed together. This is the female ...

... and this is the distinctly dark male.

As I went over to them I passed a pair of Magpies rummaging in the dead leaves under a willow. The abandoned their search to be given peanuts.

The Little Owl at the Round Pond kept watch from inside her hole.

A small band of Great Tits is now turning up regularly in the Portuguese laurel by the bridge.

A Robin perched in the corkscrew hazel in the Flower Walk.

On the waterfront by the statue of Peter Pan, Kate Bingham (on the left) and Hannah Parry delighted the passers by with a piece by Handel. They are two members of a recorder trio called Triple Fipple.

Magnolia buds

The male Chaffinch in the Flower Walk perched among the fluffy buds of a magnolia tree. The budding seemed premature, but apparently it's normal for magnolias to put out buds in winter and wait till spring before opening them. The fluff helps to keep the buds from freezing, and there would be sugar in the sap to act as an antifreeze.

A Wren flitted around in the reed bed by the Italian Garden, never emerging fully into view.

The Robin at the Henry Moore sculpture called for attention from a tree before flying down to my hand for a pine nut.

A pair of Magpies were also expecting service ...

... as was a Jay at the back of the Albert Memorial.

The Little Owl at the Round Pond was looking out of her hole.

The pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gull eyed a pigeon bathing in the lake. If the pigeon had closed its eyes for a moment when splashing the gull would have run at it, but the pigeon realised its danger and flew away.

The Black-Headed Gull that owns the landing stage was made uneasy by a Herring Gull ...

... so it flew down to the water and expelled another Black-Headed Gull, just to show who was boss.

The Czech Black-Headed Gull ...

... and the familiar EZ73323 ...

... have been squabbling for months over the ownership of a notice post at Fisherman's Keep. But there are two posts here, and the gulls seem finally to have agreed that EZ has the western one and the Czech the eastern one.

A young Grey Heron perched on the mable fountain at the edge of the Italian Garden. It looked over its shoulder as if it felt unsettled at being stared at by a stone nymph.

The heron claiming the nest on the Serpentine island is definitely the one with the very red beak that nested in a hawthorn tree a short way to the west last year. The colour is getting brighter by the day.

But there's no sign of its old mate. There is another heron that stands on the wire basket at the east end, but the two take no notice of each other.

A Cormorant was fishing at the edge of the Italian Garden reed bed. It was doing very well, pulling at least one small fish out of the reeds every minute.

The male Great Crested Grebe of the pair that nested at the bridge attended to his wings, preening them and flapping to settle the feathers properly.

The young female Mute Swan who flew in from Regent's Park is holding her own well in the crowd of adults by the Dell restaurant. She won a bit of pizza, but then had to fend off a Black-Headed Gull that was trying to snatch it.

A moment of peace

During a brief lull in the awful Christmas songs blasting out of the Winter Wasteland a Robin in the Rose Garden had time to sing a couple of phrases.

A small party of Great Tits worked their way through a tree.

I missed the usual Chaffinch in the Flower Walk because this was closed off with police tape and there seemed to have been some grisly event. But the observant bird picked me up near the Round Pond and demanded one pine nut after another.

It took two visits to see the Little Owl, and this dull picture was taken as the light was fading.

The gravel strip in the pond is quite clean again, as can be seen in this picture of a Common Gull. The thick coating of droppings on it has not been removed by recent heavy rains so I think it must have been hosed off, a horrid task for the gardeners.

There were 14 teenage cygnets on the pond. You can see six of them in this picture looking down the Vista. Only one was hatched in the park -- the cygnet that was walked up to the pond by its mother to save it from the killer swan on the main lake -- and the others have flown in from somewhere.

This picture was taken in drizzly conditions but you can still see the ugly tower of Centre Point spoiling Bridgeman's carefully planned long view. If I had been the park manager in 1963 I would have planted some trees on the high ground that by now would have grown tall enough to hide it.

A Magpie rummaged in a bin at the Lido restaurant ...

... and one beside the Long Water stared challengingly till I gave it a peanut.

The Grey Wagtail was running around the Serpentine.

The dominant Black-Headed Gull looked over his territory from the Big Bird statue.

A young Grey Heron fishing under the bridge was joined by a slightly younger teenage swan from the dominant family.

A swan in the shallow water by the Serpentine outflow poked around in the dead leaves on the bottom and seemed to be finding something edible. I don't think it was the leaves, and wonder what it was. If it just wanted algae it would go somewhere this isn't covered with leaves.

The Great Crested Grebe pair from the bridge were fishing together under the Italian Garden.

What a contrast between the pale winter feathers of the female and the deep colours of the dark male on the Serpentine.

It occurs to me that all the ultra-dark grebes I've seen are male, so it may be a hormone thing. The breeding plumage of both sexes is normally exactly the same colour.

The Moorhens in the Dell were preening on their favourite rock, since the Mallards that push them off were temporarily away.

The Buck Hill shelter is home to all kinds of activities: martial arts from aikido to Zen archery, meditation, mindfulness, Latin dance classes and birthday parties. Sometimes there are several going on at once.