My camera and I went for another walk in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park in mid May. It was a lovely sunny day and I spent several hours there.
I began my walk by looking at the stunning White Garden near Kensington Palace. It was being planted with thousands of white flowers in order to form a "living tribute" to mark the 20th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. It looked absolutely amazing even though, when I went there, the gardeners were at work and some of the beds were just bare earth. The beds that had already been planted contained hundreds of white alliums and foxgloves.
Planted as a memorial garden to Princess Diana, the sunken garden at her former home had been transformed over the winter. It has been renamed the White Garden and now features more than 12,000 hand-planted bulbs and flowers. There are also 3,500 Mysostis Snowsylva - white forget-me-knots - that were specially sourced by the gardening team as they had a unique link with the Princess.
The long racemes of a white wisteria were hanging from the arched pergola at the top of the steps by one of the entrances to the garden.
After leaving the White Garden, I walked round the edge of the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. On the nearby grass was a mother Egyptian goose with her three sleepy juvenile Egyptian goslings.
On the Round Pond itself I came across a baby Mallard duckling.
Two juvenile Coot chicks were standing on a solar platform in the middle of the pond. An adult Coot is hiding round the corner, presumably standing on her nest as some twigs can just be seen in that area.
At the edge of the pond, a female Coot was just beginning to build a nest. She did not seem to have been having much luck at this!
A starling was wandering round the edge of the pond. It had a beak full of worms and flew off across the water when I got too near.
I walked across the park from the Round Pond to the Long Water where I came across a Gadwall couple - female on the left and male on the right.
There was a row of herring gulls on the top of the posts across the lake. The odd one out is a cormorant.
In the distance, on the left-hand side of the posts, a mother mute swan was taking her five baby cygnets for a swim. One cygnet was being very lazy and had hitched a ride on mum's back.
I love the rider's little head sticking up above and it's bum and legs showing at the bottom of mum's large white wing.
At the end of the Long Water is the Italian Garden. There were lots of beautiful yellow irises in the ponds there.
There is a fountain in the middle of each pond, though they are not always turned on.
There is a statue at each side of the fountain that overlooks the view of the Long Water and urns that are decorated with swans are perched along the top of the walls at the edge of the lake.
There was a female Egyptian goose lying on the grass at the side of the Italian Garden. She had a very light-coloured head.
I then walked along the path that lead to the larger lake in Hyde Park. Resting on the path along the edge of the Serpentine were a couple of juvenile coot chicks.
Not far away was a mother mute swan and her baby cygnets. She was standing in the water and the wind was blowing her feathers about.
I went into cuteness overload here as I could not stop taking photographs of her little fluffy babies.
There were four young cygnets altogether.
This is proud mum with two of her youngsters.
The family was joined later by the male mute swan. When he climbed out of the lake and stood on the path, he suffered a bad-feather day when the wind got hold of his large wings!
At this point I had only completed about half of my walk in the park so I will have to download the rest of my photographs - including pictures of baby goslings and Crested Grebe chicks - onto my next post.
