On a dismal dark day of steady rain, the Little Owl surprised us by sitting in the open for several hours. It seemed to have lost its former fear of humans, though I didn't like to alarm it by going too close. We need to be very tactful with these birds if we are to see more of them.

Only a heavy hailstorm sent it inside the tree. This is an old sweet chestnut, one to the west of the chestnut tree in which the pair nested last year, and the second tree from the lakeside path. It seems quite likely from the owl's behaviour that the pair are nesting in this tree, and this is the male standing guard in front of the nest.

Two other people as well as myself made a wide search for the Tawny Owl family, and I think we would have seen them if they had come out. There was little reason for them to expose themselves to the miserable weather.

Thrushes actually like rain because it brings up worms, and there were plenty to see poking around in the grass. This Song Thrush is one of the pair that attacked the Carrion Crows yesterday.

A Blackbird was in full song high in a tree north of the Albert Memorial, and indeed the Blackbird whose nest is outside the window of my flat started singing yesterday.

Here is an unusually pale female Mallard on the Serpentine. Her colour would be described as 'brown' in the technical sense that she has less black eumelanin than normal, but the usual amount of reddish phaeomelanin.

But she has kept her proper markings, unlike the black and white Mallard, also female, in which the delicately balanced pattern-making mechanism has broken down. There is plenty of melanin, but it has concentrated in some places and is entirely missing in others.

Among ducks, Mallards seem uniquely prone to colour variations, and I wonder whether this is caused by genes from escaped white domestic ducks, which are descended from Mallard but have had their genetic makeup disturbed by inbreeding. There are several prevalent colour combinations, including pure white wild Mallards -- there was a white female on the Serpentine a few years ago -- almost pure black usually with a white neck ring and/or bib, and males with a mostly normal pattern but with their normal narrow white neck ring much widened and maybe also forming a bib. I would guess that the last of these are crosses between black and white birds and normal ones, as if the colour disturbance was being diluted.

No sign of any Tawny Owls yet, though I went round their usual places quite throughly. The wet weather over the weekend has deterred other owl watchers. I hope some join me soon, as finding the owlets is more than a one-man operation.

There were two police vans parked on the path near the leaf yard, and I feared that some awful crime had been committed. Not at all: when I got there I found two policemen and a policewoman all happily feeding Great Tits on their hands. I didn't dare to take a picture of them. One of them told me that he had recently seen another Tawny Owl near the 'Bird Sanctuary' -- that is, the enclosure with the Rima fountain. He said that it was grey and large, and thought it was female -- female owls are larger than males. If he is right about that, it probably means that this pair isn't breeding. We very much hope that the Kensington Gardens pair are, and the signs are encouraging.

Near the Serpentine Gallery there was the whirring sound of two angry thrushes, which turned out to be Song Thrushes attacking a couple of Carrion Crows by buzzing them on the ground. Between attacks, they also chased a Jay out of a tree. This is the best picture I could manage of their lightning swoops.

I saw ten Pied Wagtails in Hyde Park: seven in a group feeding on the grass near the Bluebird Boats cabin, one in the Diana enclosure, and two chasing each other flirtatiously along the edge of the Serpentine.

I haven't seen a Grey Wagtail for some time, though I am keeping an eye on the bridge in the Dell under which they have nested for some years. Let's hope that the violent gardening in this area hasn't frightened them away.

A Green Woodpecker was pecking for worms on the east side of the Vista, until it was frightened away by a pair of baby rabbits. They are easily alarmed.

The Shovellers are still here. Here are a couple shovelling side by side under the Serpentine bridge.

Although Shovellers breed in this country, the ones we see on the lake are only winter visitors. They have odd migration habits: northern birds fly into Britain in winter, and those that spend the summer in Britain fly south in winter.

A wide search over the Tawny Owls' area failed to reveal any owlets, though of course they could be anywhere in a circle half a mile across, in which there are thousands of trees. Will keep searching. If the owls have kept to their usual schedule, this is the time they should be bringing the family out.

The Great Crested Grebes' nest under the willow tree near the Serpentine Bridge is now occupied.

They haven't laid any eggs yet, as I was able to see when the sitting bird stood up. You can get an adequate view of this nest from the parapet of the bridge, but the willow twigs will burst into leaf soon and it will impossible to see anything from the bridge, the path or the other side of the lake.

Another pair of Great Crested Grebes were searching for a nest site along the edge of the Serpentine island. There is no really good place on the whole island; even the overhanging bushes at the east end are in water that is too shallow to prevent raids by Grey Herons. More overhanging trees and bushes would be a help here.

A flock of Long-Tailed Tits landed in an alder tree near the Queen's Temple. Here one of them takes a moment to preen itself before setting off again on the endless bug hunt.

Near the owls' tree, Charlie the Carrion Crow turned up with as much of a discarded sandwich as he could carry.

Crows often cache the food they find, which is a good idea with durable nuts but not so good for a sandwich.

There is a small encampment of Common Gulls at the southwest corner of the Round Pond. Here are six of them. The two on the right of the picture, flanked by Black-Headed Gulls, are second-year birds beginning to grow their adult light grey feathers. All of them will be leaving soon for their breeding grounds.

There are more rabbits on the east side of the Vista, including four young ones. Sadly, the park people plan to mess this area up. There are notices announcing a crazy 'improvement': a spiked fence all around the Henry Moore sculpture -- although access to it is already barred by the spiked fence along the edge of the path. The enclosure will be planted with flowers.  I don't like Henry Moore's sculpture, but there is no doubt that he intended his works to be sited on open grassland such as the bleak Yorkshire moors, not in a tacky little box of railings.

They will also be putting in extra drains here, although it is the west side of the Vista, not this side, which is a permanent swamp and really needs something done about drainage. The  park management's obsession with structures and barriers is really out of control. They are also digging up the place where the path from Queen's Gate crosses the Flower Walk to lay some kind of ornamental paving to 'emphasise' the crossing. This is right next to the area that is constantly vandalised with hideous giant marquees for commercial exhibitions, and is now permanently lost to the public.

The Mandarins saw someone feeding the ducks by the Peter Pan statue, and came over for a share.

The female has a ring: it is an ordinary BTO ring, number FP44664. It is merely a coincidence that the ring gives the address of the Natural History Museum just half a mile away, as all British rings carried this address until recently, when the BTO changed to giving the Euring web site for reporting ring numbers.

While I was searching unsuccessfully for the Tawny Owls, I passed the plane tree on the path between the Albert Memorial and the Physical Energy statue where some Green Woodpeckers nested last year. It is on the northeast corner of a path crossing, where there is a signpost. The tree has now been taken over by Ring-Necked Parakeets.

This hole is not the woodpeckers' one from last year. It looks like a natural one left by a fallen branch which has been improved by woodpeckers, whose holes are neatly circular. The woodpeckers may have lost this hole but they are still in the area, where their 'yaffle' calls and drumming can be heard.

A ferocious attack of gardening on the former shrubbery at the back of the Lido has left the area sadly denuded. Most of it is now a drab expanse of bare brown earth planted with neat rows of boring nursery plants. However, the Dunnocks who have nested here for several years have still found a little cover under a hedge, where I saw one of them poking about on the ground.

A Goldcrest was singing loudly in a yew tree in Kensington Gardens at the west end of the bridge.

On the shore of the Serpentine a Carrion Crow and a second-winter Herring Gull were disputing the ownership of a peanut.

I wondered whether a big gull can open a peanut, and the answer is yes. It can't hold the nut still with one foot while pecking it open, as a crow can with its strong prehensile toes. A gull's little webbed feet are no good for grasping. Instead it has to peck violently at the nut, which skitters away so the bird has to run after it. But eventually the sharp beak breaks the shell.

A shoal of perch under the parapet of the Italian Garden attracted first a Great Crested Grebe and then three Cormorants, always alert to the success of other fishing birds. Here one of them stands on the edge of the peculiar water filter that was part of the Victorian mechanism of the fountains.

One could not say that Cormorants are beautiful birds, but this one is looking quite glossy. It is just coming into breeding plumage. The pale patch below its wing at the top of its leg is the beginning of a white patch that will remain until midsummer. The white feathers around the neck are also more numerous at this time.

The Great Crested Grebes are not in a hurry and can simply take a nap until they get a chance to go fishing again.

The pair of Mandarins on the Long Water noticed someone feeding the ducks in front of Peter Pan, and came over for their share. The females in particular are quite aggressive and will chase a larger Mallard if annoyed.

The mysterious Barnacle Goose and the three Canada-Greylag hybrids with speckled heads, both of which are normally on the Serpentine, came on to the Long Water. All are quite used to park life and were pursuing some French tourists begging for bread. Foreign visitors are astonished by the boldness of the park birds.

There is a very small Greylag Goose on the Serpentine, as you can see from its size in relation to a couple of Black-Headed Gulls.

It has the white line along the lower edge of its folded wings that indicates an adult, so evidently this is as big as it is going to get.

There were five rabbits on the Vista by the Henry Moore sculpture. Is the population finally recovering after the crash a few years ago?

Still no sign of the Tawny Owls, but several people are watching for them daily, and there will be news here as soon as they reappear.

An unsettled day of sunshine, snow and hail. On the south shore of the Serpentine, a flock of Black-Headed Gulls swirls up amid the flakes behind some grazing some Canada and Greylag Geese.

During a sunny spell, a Jay prospects for worms near the Serpentine Gallery.

I had just given it a peanut, which it had prudently put aside in a tree for later while it continued with the search. Jays cache large amounts of food, and have an impressive ability to remember where they put thousands of nuts.

The very dark Great Crested Grebe appeared on the Long Water. Not only is he dark, but he has a particularly enormous crest.

I am sure that this is a very senior bird, and I am surprised not to have seen him on the lake before. Perhaps he has been displaced from some place where he had been for years, growing steadily darker and shaggier. He doesn't seem to have a mate.

Another pair of grebes have been hanging around near the willow tree next to the Serpentine bridge, clearly with the intention of reserving this prime nesting site. And today they started to build their nest.

Construction begins by vaguely throwing bits of twig and algae over a just-submerged forked branch until some of them stick fast and a random heap begins to form. It doesn't get any more organised than that. They will be satisfied when the heap is solid enough to sit on. Since the nest is built without any proper structure, it sags continuously off the branch and has to be topped up with fresh debris every day to keep it above water -- which at least keeps the top surface fresh, in a soggy kind of way. The stuff laid down on previous days slumps down into an underwater tangle whose mass helps to keep the nest stable.

There are now two pairs of Song Thrushes and one pair of Mistle Thrushes in the trees near the Serpentine Gallery and across the road. They are not yet showing any sign of nesting, and will probably not do so until the leaves appear to give them a bit of cover from Magpies and Carrion Crows -- not to mention the female Sparrowhawk who quarters this area every morning.

Still no sign of activity from the Tawny Owls, but we live in hope.

A bright day with a sharp wind. The sunlight brought out the lovely iridescence of a male Starling's plumage.

You can tell he is male from the blue base to his beak; on a female this would be pinkish. This bird, who has a BTO ring on his right leg, has been hanging around the leaf yard for several years trying to grab the food from my hand when I am feeding the small birds. Experience has taught him that if he comes in over my shoulder I won't see him till it's too late, so in he dives, scattering the food and often pecking a hole in my hand. I try vainly to discourage these raids, but the wily bird knows that he will always get through in the end.

This Tufted Duck, under the willow tree next to the Italian Garden, looks as if she was nesting.

She isn't. It's a Coots' nest, and she was just trying it out in the absence of the tenants. Tufted Ducks nest on land anyway.

The pair of Mandarins who have been under the willow tree on the east side of the Long Water are still there. If they decide to nest, it will be in a tree hole -- a good secure spot, but as when the ducklings emerge they will have a perilous trek to the water, and will be exposed to the ravenous gulls at all times. It is rare for any to survive on the Long Water, though they have a much better breeding record in the Regent's Canal.

Here another young creature takes a risk. This naive little rabbit wandered unconcernedly through a grim line of three Grey Herons that were hunting for rats in the shrubbery.

Fortunately the herons decided that it had grown a little too large to swallow, and left it alone.

On the edge of the Serpentine, a Pied Wagtail was strolling around as the choppy waves broke on the shore, casually trotting out of harm's way when the water surged too near.

Still no sign of a Tawny Owl. But owl pellets are turning up at the base of the nest tree, at least showing that it is occupied.