Parakeet pair

Yesterday Pete and I had an afternoon trip to London - a visit forced upon us by the need to get an indemnity for Alex's airline ticket, as I had paid for it using my credit card, but will not be flying with him. We bought a Two Together Railcard, which meant that we saved 30% on the train tickets - this new scheme is excellent for couples whose children have grown up!! The lady who issued it commented on how nice the photographs were and that we didn't look like convicts - which made me laugh as I'd only taken them about an hour before, in a bit of a rush!

After we'd completed the paperwork, we headed out to Richmond Park, which is a National Nature reserve because of its ancient trees and the rare invertebrates that live in them. I hadn't realised quite how large it was, and although we walked almost continuously we certainly didn't see all of it. For much of the time the light was flat and grey, but I still managed to take plenty of photographs, which made selection of a blip quite difficult. Though we saw many wonderful subjects - ancient oaks, heath dog-violets, a heronry, a family of Egyptian geese, lots of jackdaws, fallow deer, colourful azaleas and stinky skunk cabbages - the red-necked parakeets were perhaps the most memorable part of the day. There is a huge population of this noisy naturalised species, which looks far too exotic for the English landscape, and they breed in holes in the ancient trees. This is a nesting pair, showing each other some love and affection...

We headed back into London at dusk and spent an hour or so on the South Bank so that I could do some night-time photography of the Thames. I was pleased with the results, particularly as I didn't have a tripod, but Pete and Ben thought the parakeets were more worthy of blipping. We finally caught the 22.00 train back to Peterborough, eating our dinner on the train. I was fairly shattered when we got home - not surprising as I estimate I walked over ten miles!!