A pair of Cetti's Warblers

The Cetti's Warbler who sings beside the Long Water has a mate. I saw both of them flying through the bushes together and managed to get a picture of one. Not the world's best photograph, but these shy and elusive birds are very hard indeed to catch.

The Cetti on the Serpentine island was singing as well.

Also by the Long Water, a Long-Tailed Tit flew on to a blossoming hawthorn twig.

Two Blackcaps sang at each other from opposite sides of the path.

A Greenfinch wheezed and twittered from a treetop, but refused to turn round.

A Song Thrush was looking nervous ...

... because a Magpie ...

... and a Jay were staring at it from close quarters.

In the Flower Walk, I saw a furious male Blackbird chase a Jay out of the tree where his mate must have been nesting. There was no chance of getting a picture through the branches.

A Pied Wagtail trotted through the slime on the edge of the Serpentine.

No day would be complete without a visit from the Coal Tit at Mount Gate.

The pair of Robins also made an appearance.

I think this Herring Gull at the Triangle had killed the Feral Pigeon it was eating. The usual pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Back was busy with his own pigeon at the far end of the lake, and there were no other big gulls near. I've seen a Lesser Black-Back (not our usual one) killing a pigeon in the same place -- it's full of pigeons because people feed the birds here -- but this was nowhere to be seen. Also the pigeon was still almost entire and hadn't been partly eaten by a previous gull.

A young Grey Heron wandered too close to the female Mute Swan nesting by the Lido restaurant terrace, and her mate sped in to scare it off.

Tufted drakes engage in competitive runs and flights to impress females.

A pair of Gadwalls preened on the Serpentine. I'm very fond of these quiet coloured, well behaved ducks.

What a contrast with the violent behaviour of Mallard drakes. This one at the boathouse killed one of the five Mallard ducklings.

The drakes also drive the females way from their families in attempts to rape them. They seriously impair the survival of their species, and you would have thought that evolution would have bred this behaviour out of them. But it hasn't, any more than it has with murderous Mute Swans.

The Egyptian Geese were also at the boathouse with their seven goslings.

The eldest gosling was grazing at the Lido.

A pretty clump of columbine has come up beside the steps at the northwest corner of the bridge.

All paired up at Mount Gate

A Magpie perched in a tree at Mount Gate. A Robin below was alarmed by this and gave the high-pitched 'predator above' call that small songbirds have in common.

A Coal Tit was not particularly bothered and came to my hand several times to take pine nuts.

The male Blackbird was rootling around on the edge of the path ....

... then went into the undergrowth and started digging in the leaves. I managed to get him to take a sultana thrown on the ground.

A pair of Wood Pigeons perched on the fence. All the birds at Mount Gate are now in pairs, including the Magpies.

This is Tom's picture of the distant Swift seen yesterday over the Serpentine. There was one again today, even farther away, and one martin also so far off that it was impossible to see if it was Sand or House. There will be more soon.

At the Dell restaurant Pigeon Eater had just struck again, and was enjoying a late Sunday lunch with his mate.

At the east end of the island two Grey Herons stood together in the new nest on the left while the chicks in the nest on the right clattered their bills loudly, demanding to be fed.

One of the young herons from the first nest was fishing in the reeds below the Italian Garden.

The Coots in the southwest fountain pool still have their nine chicks.  Their survival is due to the place not being much visited by big gulls.

However, the Coot nest under the bridge was apparently predated, it's not clear what by, and three eggs were taken. The Coots have now returned and are trying again.

The Mute Swan nesting at the Serpentine outflow was turning her eggs. You could see seven.

The Canada Goose is still steadfastly sitting on her nest on the raft in the Long Water. It will be three weeks before we see any result.

The single Egyptian gosling at the Lido is getting its first proper feathers and looks very untidy.

The Mallards were looking after their five ducklings on the swan nest at the boathouse, which was temporarily deserted by the swans.

A pair of Tufted Ducks dived together in the Serpentine. They weren't actually hunting cooperatively as Great Crested Grebes or Cormorants do when fishing, as their prey is small molluscs and insect larvae which don't run away.

A patch of green alkanet by the bridge attracted an Early Bumblebee ...

... and a Honeybee.

Return of the Peregrine

Starlings are well settled in the nest hole in the plane tree by the boathouses which they have used in previous years. (No, I didn't turn up the colour on this picture.)

Another pair of Long-Tailed Tits are nesting in the bushes between the bridge and the Vista. One brought an insect to the nest.

The holly tree also had a Chiffchaff on a high branch.

A Peregrine circled high above, the first time I've seen one in the park for several weeks.

There was one Swift, one Swallow and maybe three Sand Martins over the Long Water, and I didn't get a picture of any of them. Tom got a record shot of the Swift, which I will put up when he sends it. A House Martin was also spotted on the Long water a few days ago.

It was a busy scene at Mount Gate, with the pairs of Coal Tits ...

... Blue Tits ...

... and Robins ...

... and a Blackbird coming out for food. The mate of this male is now accepting pine nuts thrown on the ground, though he remained in the tree. I must get some raisins for them, which Blackbirds love.

A Wren on the edge of the Serpentine surveyed the scene, including the people photographing it.

But sad to say, it looks as if the Goldcrest nest at the bridge has been predated. It was too near the surface of the yew tree, and if I could see it a Magpie could too.

A pair of Grey Herons on the island have built a nest very close to the nest with chicks it it, and were mating on it to the fury of the resident. The chicks, just visible in this picture, were watching too.

The Coot chicks in the Italian garden are growing well. These are three of the six in the northeast pool.

Two very new Mallard ducklings have appeared on the north shore of the Serpentine. Sadly, an awful lot must have disappeared in the two days since they came out of the nest.

They fidgeted and preened.

The other five are in good order and getting bigger by the day. They were at the Lido.

The Mute Swans beside the Lido restaurant terrace are now nesting seriously. The Wildlife Officer, Nick Burnham, has put a fence around the land side of the nest to keep inquisitive humans at a distance.

The swans at the boathouse also seem to be established, and are comfortable on some straw provided by Nick.

The Egyptian Geese here still have their seven goslings in assorted sizes.

Song Thrush imitating a Blackcap

A Song Thrush singing quietly to himself beside the Long Water heard a Blackcap and did a good imitation of the song.

There are Wrens all around the Long Water, singing and chittering and dashing around in the bushes.

A Robin in the Flower Walk bathed in a puddle left by the morning rain.

Just along the path a Long-Tailed Tit was collecting insects for a nest hidden in the bushes.

A family portrait of the Grey Herons in the nest at the east end of the island. As usual with family portraits, the children refused to pose properly.

There's a third Coot nest in the Italian Garden, well hidden in irises in the northwest pool. I only spotted it because I saw one of them carrying a withered iris leaf to a planter.

The Moorhen nest at the Vista is hard to see, but usually they're so well hidden that you don't see them at all.

An aggressive male Mute Swan, probably 4FUK who is now the boss of the Serpentine in the killer's absence, deliberately descended next to another swan to frighten it.

This pair of a Canada Goose and a Canada x Greylag hybrid has been together for quite a while, and you often see them near the Triangle. There's no hope of goslings as the hybrid is sterile. A cross between two members of the Greylag genus Anser would be fertile -- as with the Bar-Headed x Greylag hybrids we sometimes see here -- but not one between Anser and the Canada genus Branta.

As the seven Egyptian goslings start to grow it's become apparent that they are from two different broods, with two of the older and bigger than the others. Egyptians are vague about whether offspring are their own and adopt easily.

The male Egyptian at the Henry Moore sculpture was alone again. It looks as if his mate is nesting once more after two unsuccessful attempts in past months.

The single Egyptian gosling at the Lido was on the jetty with its parents. So were the five Mallard ducklings.

The solitary Mandarin drake wandered along the shore.

A Mexican orange bush in the Flower Walk had three species of hoverfly in it. I've seen this one, Helophilus pendulus, known as the Sun Fly or the Footballer (because of its striped thorax), at Rainham Marshes but not before in the park.

There was also the very common Batman hoverfly Myathropa florea. The bat symbol on the thorax is not well marked in this one.

It was joined by a Tachina fera, which has no common name as far as I know.

Lastly, the problem of yesterday's caterpillars is solved. I looked at the tree they were in and it was a box tree. Also it was partly dead. From that it was easy to find that they were the caterpillars of the Box Tree Moth Cydalima perspectalis, which encloses parts of a tree in a web and eats all the leaves inside it. This is a picture from Wikipedia by Didier Descouens, released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Moral: if you see an insect that's hard to identify, note the plant it's on.