Perhaps overdoing it on the Take-Opportunity-To-Get-Away-And-Relax-Goddamit-Relax front, my return from the north east was but a stepping stone to a dive south (just don't even go there, sniggerers).
On Saturday morning, I took breakfast at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park - with its leafy green outlook to the west. Deftly egg-dipping a hash brown, I was roused by an unusual bird call. And thus, I spotted - clear as the blue sky - my first ever wild ring-necked parakeet. There were many of them. And later, a trio came and perched in the tree of a property next door to where I was staying.
It's good when the Red Deer faces competition for my weekly 'Most Favourite Bit of Nature' prize.
Other observation, of human nature: In the cosmopolitan centres - Manchester, London, Stoke-on-Trent, it is easy to feel surrounded by the body beautiful. On fine sunny days, the work that goes into the body beautiful is there to be seen - the doggedly determined clomping round the park, the gritty extra lap on the 21-speed racer, the comedy of the power walk. Maybe it's because much in their lives is taut, and edgy, and competitive, and all a bit brow-furrowing, but a lot of these Body Beauties look like they ought to relax a bit. Look at the ring-necked parakeet or the red deer, their's are paces that seem to be much more well-adjusted - culturally-speaking.I'm also liking deadwood - it's likely to be a contender for this week's prize. Never to be overlooked, though, is the mid-evening goldfinch rhapsody.
7 comments:
During a dark few months I was living in Croydon, Parakeets appeared to be the area's most common bird. It was kind of cool waiting for the bus in morning: you could close your eyes and listen to them, and for a second Croydon felt quite far away.
I wonder if they are escaped pets.
Croydon Exotic, Huw, Croydon Exotic.
That's the theory, Pat. By the 1970s, they were breeding within these shores. Numbers are now in the order of 4000-5000 pairs, biggest concentration is in Esher, Surrey.
I vote for the pied wagtail. Totally ordinary but quite happy to dabble around the tarmac for breadcrumbs, thus bringing a touch of life and beauty to asphalt and dirty red brick.
Meanwhile - thinking of the pied wagtail, I see the kind of bird who would loiter about the car park of the Fenton Manor Sports Complex... the kind of girl who when I was a kid I would see as attractive, but beneath whose veneer there was a degree of trashiness that mother would never approve of. But that Dad would be blind to.
A real pied wagtail would be less embarrassing at the karaoke, perhaps?
Snig- oh, sorry.
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