The elusive woodpecker

The distinctive 'chip' call of a Great Spotted Woodpecker sets you looking for it, but it's seldom as visible as this (and sometimes it turns out to be a Starling doing a very good imitation of the call). This is a male, as you can see from the red patch on the back of his neck. He was near the Steiner bench, where I have seen them before several times.

A Chiffchaff was calling loudly and bouncing around in the trees near Peter Pan. It was almost impossible to photograph and the only clear view I got was a back one.

Three Magpies lower in the same holly tree seemed to be plotting some dreadful exploit.

A Carrion Crow drank and splashed on the algae-encrusted marble fountain on the edge of the Italian Garden.

A Jay near the Henry Moore sculpture was looking smarter than the usual scruffy lot around at the moment.

A tricolour Feral Pigeon was also striking in the Flower Walk. This is the original wild Rock Dove colour scheme interrupted by white patches.

A Wood Pigeon looked bewildered in a bramble thicket. They love blackberries, but these grow on the end of thin stems are are difficult for a heavy bird to get at. The only way is to find a stronger twig below a clump and reach for it from there.

The male Little Owl at the Round Pond stared down from the top of a chestnut tree. There was a big dog running around underneath, something they really hate even when they are a safe seventy feet up.

Tom was at Rainham Marshes and got a good picture of a young Sedge Warbler. The stagnant background of dead reeds and duckweed sets it off very well.

The adventurous young Grey Heron at the island had occupied the Great Crested Grebes' now disused nest and was trying to catch small fish from it. It didn't get anything while I was there, but it's earning useful life skills ...

... unlike its idle sibling which was lurking in the nest again. We know it can fly, but its just can't be bothered. It's going to get a rude shock when its parents stop feeding it. 

With three hungry chicks and the available fish very small, the grebes are having to work hard to feed them. It was the mother's turn to do the fishing, and she managed to find one for each of them in five minutes.

The Coot on the new nest in the northwest pool in the Italian Garden shifted position for long enough to give a glimpse of the eggs.

Another Greylag family with three teenagers has flown in after breeding in a safer place outside the park.

The Egyptians tend to moult in a much more disorganised way than the big geese. This one is very late and only just starting to regrow its flight feathers.

Five Red-Crested Pochard drakes crossed the Long Water at the Vista.

Only the usual insects were on view today, but they can make quite pretty pictures. A Buff-Tailed Bumblebee browsed on a patch of verbena in the Rose Garden ...

... and a Honeybee was busy on Black-Eyed Susan in the Flower Walk.

The Flower Walk Robin returns

I hadn't seen the familiar Robin the Flower Walk, which used to come to my hand every time I passed, since May and was getting worried that something had happened to it. But there has been a young Robin on the territory, as we have seen a few times in recent days, and this afternoon the adult appeared in a bush and flew over to take several pine nuts as if nothing had happened in the interval.

There has a also been a lack of Blue Tits here, but today two came out in the little side path that leads to the Albert Memorial ...

...as well as the usual Coal Tit often seen in the nearby corkscrew hazel -- a shame I couldn't get a picture without twigs in the way.

This young Robin is the one in the Rose Garden shrubbery, which is gradually becoming bolder.

The male Chaffinch was also there. (This is not the same as the one that regularly appears in Kensington Gardens.)

The Greenfinch family was flying around in the trees north of Peter Pan, and one of them perched on a bare twig in the top of the dead tree.

It was quite windy at the Round Pond, and the Little Owl was perched on a substantial branch to avoid being shaken about. The leaf fragments in the picture aren't flying in the wind. The owl was behind a spider's web, and bits of leaf were caught in it.

A Grey Heron, using an abandoned Coot nest on the Long Water as a fishing platform, caught a very small fish.

The three Great Crested Grebe chicks at the island were with their mother while their father was off fishing for them. So far I haven't seen any of them being given a fish, but they must be getting regularly fed as they are growing visibly. She found a feather on the water and passed it to one of them.

The obstinate Coots at the bridge are still occupying their unsuccessful nest. Even in past years when they've had chicks here these have always been eaten by the Herring Gulls and Lesser Black-Backs that perch on the nearby posts. But Coots are never deterred by experience, and just carry on grimly.

Duncan Campbell reports that the Coots in the northwest pool in the Italian Garden are breeding again and have five or six eggs. This is a much safer spot, and three of the four main pools have produced chicks this year most of which are still alive.

The Greylag and Canada Geese in the park have learnt that the numerous big gulls on the lake make it more or less impossible to bring up goslings, and have taken to breeding outside the park and bringing in their young as soon as they can fly. Here are two newly arrived teenagers following their mother. Geese, unlike swans, can fly before they're fully grown.

One of them had a splashy wash and flap.

There is a group of four Canada x Greylag hybrid geese on the Serpentine, apparently siblings. Three of them had a disagreement with aome Canadas and honked and gestured angrily. Then the fourth joined them, apparently with a Canada mate. This union won't produce any goslings, as goose hybrids from different genera are sterile.

One of the Tufted ducklings could be seen near the Vista. Th rest of the family was under a bush. I still don't know how many have survived as they spend so much time under water, but when I could see more of the family yesterday there were at least six.

There was no dragonfly excitement today, but an ordinary male Black-Tailed Skimmer could be seen enjoying the sun-warmed kerb at the Vista. Yes, it does have four wings. You can just see its right hind wing angled down behind its left hind wing. They can move all four wings completely independently, the secret of their amazing manoeuvrability.

A Speckled Wood butterfly perched on the railings in the Flower Walk in the place where there evidently they breed, as there are always Speckled Woods here in the season. Their beautifully patterned wings look equally fine from underneath with the light shining through them.

A patch of catmint in the Rose Garden attracts a lot of bees, especially Buff-Tailed Bumblebees.

The Saturday Latin dancing in the park has now spread from the traditional dance in the Hyde Park bandstand to a much looser and more riotous crowd on the area below. I don't know what they are doing but everyone seems to be having a good time.

Imperial antics

A Blackcap looked for blackberries in a bramble patch at Peter Pan.

The familiar Chaffinch, who may appear almost anywhere in Kensington Gardens, picked me up at the bridge and collected several pine nuts.

One of the young Peregrines was lying down on the ledge on the barracks tower.

The male Little Owl at the Round Pond was well hidden in a horse chestnut tree and it took some time to find him.

A pair of Herring Gulls, moaning affectionately at each other, drove out a young one that had got too close to them.

Pigeon Eater stared imperiously from his station on the roof. The remains of a Feral Pigeon farther up the shore showed that he had had his lunch.

The little stream in the Dell, with is less than 50 yards long, provides space for just one Grey Heron to fish at a time. When a second one arrived they had to walk off carefully in opposite directions to avoid a fight.

The posts in the middle of the Long Water which are all that remain of the ill-fated tern raft provide a place for Cormorants. We still don't have many, as this year's fish haven't grown large enough to be worth catching. Some young perch at Peter Pan were the largest I've seen, and they were barely two inches long.

The three Great Crested Grebe chicks were aboard their father at the island.

They don't seem to be using their nest any more, and a Coot had occupied it.

The pair of Mute Swans that nested behind the railings on the west side of the boathouse have now set up on the east side. They aren't nesting, just using it as a place where they are safe from dogs. This side would be cooler on a hot afternoon.

There was a confrontation between dragonflies at the Vista. A pair of Lesser Emperors were setting down to mate on a floating twig when a female (large) Emperor flew over them. You can see the brown thorax of the Lesser Emperors; Emperors have a green thorax.

She knocked them off the twig. In this picture she's at the bottom, and the two Lessers have had to take off.

They flew to the spiked railings but found them an awkward spot ...

 ... and moved to a more comfortable place on an upright.

A Small Red-Eyed Damselfly rested on an iris leaf in the Italian Garden.

A Buff-Tailed Bumblebee was browsing busily on a clump of a different kind of verbena in the Flower Walk. It's American Blue Vervain, Verbena hastata. And no, it isn't blue, that would be too much to ask.

The timid heron finally emerges

The male Chaffinch in the Rose Garden shrubbery ...

... and the young Robin are now confidently coming out to take pine nuts from the ground.

The male Blackbird lurked in a bush. I've tried to tempt him with raisins but so far without effect. Blackbirds are extremely nervous creatures.

The weather has now broken with a thunderstorm, but the afternoon was hot and sultry and a Carrion Crow at the bridge was panting to cool down.

The female Little Owl at the Round Pond was in the shade of her usual lime tree ...

... and the male was at the top of a horse chestnut.

Pigeon Eater was in his customary place on the roof of the Dell restaurant. The building just doesn't look right without his menacing presence.

The timid young Grey Heron has finally made it out of the nest. It was scratching itself in a tree.

Its sibling was in another tree. You can tell them apart because the timid heron has more of a punk hairdo.

The young heron from the previous nest, a couple of months older, has lost all its juvenile spikiness, though its grey face will remain till its next moult.

The three Great Crested Grebe chicks at the island were having a grand time rushing around and chasing each other, watched over by their devoted parents.

While the family that own this nest were playing at the island, another pair came in and inspected the nest. But they realised that confronting a pair on their own territory, with the moral advantage of having chicks, was going to fail and soon left.

The indomitable Coots at the bridge, having lost their chicks for a second time, were back on the nest. Will they really have the energy to try again?

The single Mute cygnet on the Serpentine already has that imperious swan stare.

A female Black-Tailed Skimmer dragonfly perched on a bench in the Rose Garden.

There was a head-on view of a Speckled Wood butterfly on a bramble leaf near the Italian Garden.

Like many butterflies, it appears to have only four legs. It does have six but the front pair are greatly reduced and of no use.