Good morning birdsters! My wife and I spent a week in London in June. I lugged my good lens across the pond, hoping to get some serviceable snapshots of commoners in Hyde Park and Kew Gardens.
Unfortunately, it was a challenging trip. After three years in remission, my chronic, unexplained knee swelling decided to have its worst flare-up ever. I was in considerable pain the entire time, and there were days when I couldn’t even get down the stairs of our flat, much less navigate the Tube. Still, I managed to squeeze in a couple hours of birding.
My favorite Euro-birdie is the blue tit. I saw several, but only managed one good shot:
I was aided in getting that shot by a kind stranger who not only showed me where the various tits hang out in Hyde Park, but also lured them to us by doing this:
That’s a great tit on his hand. His tit-whispering also brought us one of the coal variety:
Yes, they do look remarkably like American black-capped or Carolina chickadees.
I saw several other common birds on my wobbly limp through Hyde Park. A wren:
A jackdaw:
A magpie:
And several ring-necked parakeets. These extremely tame dudes were a big tourist draw:
At Kew Gardens we saw mostly waterbirds, though I did get a decent shot of a robin:
Here’s a tufted duck:
And here’s a Eurasian coot with one of its fuzzies.
A different view of the fuzzy:
Speaking of fuzzies, we also saw a swan family:
One of the activities I had to sacrifice was night photography. We managed only a brief dusk outing to the Tower Bridge.
The next time I do Dawn Chorus, I’ll explain how exploring Iceland on a bad knee is even more fun than the stairs, concrete, and impatient pedestrians of London.