LONDON: December 8-12, 2007 & January 4, 2008

On the evening of December 8, 2007 Susan and I boarded a Virgin Atlantic flight from San Francisco to London arriving 11:00 AM the next day, December 9, 2007. It was my first flight overseas in 25 years. In order to get on our new time schedule, after checking into the hotel, we immediately began walking to keep us awake as long as possible. Our hotel, the tiny but very accommodating, Hotel 20 in Earl’s Court, was just two blocks from Kensington-Knightsbridge Road, a pleasant if noisy walk that takes one past Holland Park and Hyde Park before arriving at Buckingham Palace and the lovely St. James Park, all on my list of potential birding sites. By the time we arrived at Holland Park on the first day it was nearly dark; it becomes dark that time of year in London at 4:00 PM! Though we could scarcely see anything we entered the gate at Holland Park anyway and were surprised to hear a lot of bird song, the only thing recognizable though was something I took to be an Eurasian Robin. We were very tired but persisted in our walk down Knightsbridge past Hyde Park, the Royal Albert Hall, through the Marble Arch, and finally to Buckingham Palace. It was raining lightly and dinner time was approaching so we turned back toward Earl’s Court where we decided upon a Thai Restaurant called Britannia Thai. Our first clue that this would be a very bad meal was that the sign outside said, “Thia Food.” The food was indeed very bad and the beer was tepid. After dinner we returned to the Hotel 20 and tried to read in bed but after dropping off to sleep and dropping our books to the floor repeatedly we gave up and fell soundly asleep at 9:00 PM.

December 10, 2007, the first thing after breakfast at the Hotel 20, we headed back to Holland Park. In the day light we could see where all the bird song was coming from as the trees were full of Blue Tits. A Song Thrush hopped along the ground and there were many Black-headed Gulls on the soccer field. As we walked along I spotted a group of Chaffinches pecking along the fence but a lady’s dog chased them away. There were a number of beautiful bright green colored Rose-nosed Parakeets in the trees adding color to the overcast day. There were quite a few Eurasian Robins singing out in plain view. We heard some drumming and found the culprit to be a Great-spotted Woodpecker high up in the trees. At the Holland Park pond were a few Common Moorhens and a Great Cormorant. Wood Pigeons walked about nearby and Magpies were abundant. We continued along the nicely manicured path until we came to a sign for a Kyoto Garden. We were just about to go up to it when I stopped to film a stupid introduced Peacock. A cart pulled up with two police from the Royal Burrough of Kensington and Chelsea in it. One of them asked me what I was doing with a tripod. I said I was filming birds and he told me that was not allowed without a permit and I would have to go get one from Funkie. I put my tripod away and we went off to find Funkie. Funkie told us that we would have to pay 275 pounds in order to videotape in Holland Park. At the exchange rate of .4 pounds to the dollar that amounted to $675! I do love my home movies but not to the tune of $675 so we left or I suppose you could say thrown out of, Holland Park vowing to return the next day to secretly videotape with my small video camera and no tripod.

We continued down Kensington Road until we came to Hyde Park. Immediately upon entering Hyde Park we found a Eurasian Jay in a tree. We walked across the lawn to a pond which was full of Tufted Duck, Mute Swan, Greylag Geese (made famous by the movie Wings of Migration), and Eurasian Coot. A Rook was calling noisily from a tree and a Pied Wagtail scurried along the path. Most of the gulls were Black-headed Gulls but there was also one Common Gull, one Herring Gull, and one Lesser Black-backed Gull. We walked from the pond down to the Serpentine which is a water way lined with thickets in places and a nice paved path. There we saw more Tufted Ducks which are very common in London, two Egyptian Geese, a Grey Heron, and a Great-crested Grebe. In the shrubs we found Blackbirds, more Wood Pigeons, and one Mistle Thrush. We stopped in a café to warm up and have lunch and then conintued down the path along the serpentine when two bobbies approached us enquiring again about our tripod. I thought we were going to be arrested but one of them said, “oh are you just looking at seagulls?” and left us alone. I was very anxious after that. I didn’t know it was a crime to use a tripod in England.

After Hyde Park we went again to Buckingham Palace to see it in the day time and the front gates were jammed with tourists. I believe they were changing the guard but I was more interested in nearby St. James Park. So we crossed the bridge and walked along the pond there. It was full of ducks and geese including Red-breasted Goose, Bar-headed Goose, Barnacle Goose, Red-crested Pochard, Common Pochard, Ross’s Goose, Great White Pelican, more Tufted Ducks, and Canada Goose. After enjoying our stroll along St. James Park we went to Westminster Abbey. I was looking forward to seeing Dickens’s grave but was disappointed to learn upon arriving there that no filming is allowed. We toured the abbey and I was annoyed that people were walking on top of Dickens with utter disrespect. I knew that Thomas Hardy was buried next to Dickens but I never knew that above Dickens Friedrich Handel is buried and beside him is Rudyard Kipling. Westminster Abbey is very beautiful but it was really a thrill to see my hero’s final resting place. Back outside we passed Big Ben which happened to be chiming and then crossed the River Thames on Westminster Bridge. As darkness fell we watched the Houses of Parliament light up across the river. We walked from there to Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square but fatique was setting in and it was very crowded in Piccadilly Circus so we walked back to Knightsbridge where we had a less than memorable meal at Bunch of Grapes. At least our pints were cold. Then we returned back to Hotel 20.

December 11, 2007, we headed out first thing in the morning back to Holland Park with my little Sony Handycam. We furtively videotaped Great Tit, Blue Tit, and Long-tailed Tit on the entrance road. We returned to the little pond which was thriving with birds including my first look at a Fieldfare and a Redwing. Then we went up to the Kyoto Garden which only had a Grey Heron and a Winter Wren but was quite nice nevertheless.

We took the Tube to Regent’s Park where we saw the one and only House Sparrow (this is a bird that was introduced to the US in the 1800s and has spread like a disease across North America) of the whole trip. We walked along the well manicured path to a hedgerow where we found a Dunnock and more Chaffinches and another Eurasian Jay. We visited London Zoo and by the time we finished there was little light left to visit the waterway. In the failing light we saw Smew, Eurasian Wigeon, Common Teal, Mandarin Duck, Red-crested Pochard, Tufted Duck, and curiously a Common Eider. Other birds there were Goosander, Common Goldeneye, Hooded Merganser, Ruddy Shelduck, and in the trees European Goldfinch and another Winter Wren. We had dinner in Piccadilly Square at the Blue Lagoon which was a much nicer Thai restaurant with decent food and then attended a performance of Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre. We returned to Bunch of Grapes in Knightsbridge for a couple of ales before turning in for the night at the Hotel 20.

December 12, 2007 was our last day in London. We toured the Tower of London which I very much enjoyed and where I saw the only Raven of the trip. I thought there would be bloody walls and instruments of death but there was only one axe and chopping block and mostly cells. I did not know that the Tower of London was originally built by William the Conqueror as a fortress against invasion. We went to the cell where Lady Jane Grey was imprisoned before being shamefully and wrongfully beheaded and saw her name carved in the wall. After the Tower of London we walked across Tower Bridge and London Bridge, and again visited St. James Park before heading off to London’s Heathrow Airport for our long flight to Johanesburg. We spent the next three weeks in South Africa, which will be discussed at length in the next section, before spending one final day in London before returning to the States.

January 4, 2008, we arrived in London’s Heathrow from Cape Town at 9:00 AM and then checked into a nearby hotel, the Park Inn. We took a bus from there to the Tube and then the Tube back to Regent’s Park. We went straight to the Inner Circle and found the waterway where we learned that it was actually a Waterfowl Reserve hosting waterfowl from around the world. It was comforting to see most of the birds from earlier in the trip—the Wood Pigeon, Black-headed Gull, Dunnock, Chaffinch, Magpie, Eurasian Coot, Mute Swan, Blue Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Eurasian Jay, Blackbird, Great-crested Grebe, Greylag Goose, and Egyptian Goose. We also saw many exotics in the waterfowl reserve—Common Shelduck, Ruddy Shelduck, Wood Duck, Mandarin Duck, Gadwall, Pintail, Baikal Teal, Ferruginous Duck, Common Eider, and Goosander. After getting very close looks at these ducks we will probably never see again and certainly never so close, we walked to the British Museum. We toured parts of the museum including the section on ancient Egpyt where we enjoyed looking at the mummies and ancient tablets. The museum was very crowded so we left and walked to the Museum of Natural History in Knightsbridge. We stayed until it closed. It was dark out and raining lightly. We had the best dinner of the trip at the Masala Zone, an Indian Restaurant in Earl's Court, and then took the long Tube ride back to the Park Inn where we literally passed out from exhaustion. Then next day we flew back to the US and that concluded our trip, a magnificent trip full of wonders that I will never forget for the rest of my life.
39 new species
Common Blackbird
Common Chaffinch
Eurasian Coot
Great Cormorant
Carrion Crow
Ferruginous Duck
Mandarin Duck
Fieldfare
European Goldfinch
Goosander
Bar-headed Goose
Barnacle Goose
Egyptian Goose
Greylag
Red-breasted Goose
Great Crested Grebe
Black-headed Gull
Common Gull
Grey Heron
Eurasian Jay
Common Magpie
Rose-nosed Parakeet
White Pelican
Common Pochard
Red-crested Pochard
Redwing
European Robin
Rook
Common Shelduck
Smew
Black Swan
Mistle Thrush
Song Thrush
Blue Tit
Great Tit
Long-tailed Tit
Pied Wagtail
Woodpigeon
Great Spotted Woodpecker