A Grand Day Out

One of many lists which I carry around in my filofax is of places in and around London to visit. I've had it for some years, and it gets added to from time to time -- and just as occasionally, a tick appears next to an item to show that it's been duly visited. These ticks don't appear very often, even though Judith and I tell each other at the start of every year that we really must make an effort otherwise we'll never see them at all....but then ordinary everyday life gets in the way and before we know it the summer's over, we've spent most of our time gardening, and places are closing up for the winter.

But this weekend just past we made an effort, and took a train up the Lee Valley to visit Rye House Gatehouse and Rye Meads Nature Reserve. There's not much to see at the Gatehouse, although the late medieval brickwork is worth more than a passing glance; one would probably see more from the roof during the winter, when the trees aren't in leaf, but as the property is closed to the public from October to March inclusive, only the Lee Valley Park Authority's maintenance staff ever have that opportunity. There's more at Rye Meads, mostly waterfowl; at this time of year, the meadows are being grazed by three water buffalo advertised as of Romanian origin (although how these animals differ from the water buffalo one finds in southern Italy was not at all obvious), and there was an excited notice in the visitor centre announcing that kingfishers had bred in the artificial sandbank in the northeast corner of the reserve. Predictably, the hide overlooking that sandbank was crowded; but we got seats, and waited. And waited. And waited....

When it arrives, kingfishers are less like the bird one sees perched on a branch on television wildlife programmes, and more of a linear phenomenon: a bright blue and red blur as it zooms down into the burrow (presumably with a fish in its beak), followed some seconds later by another bright blue and red blur as it zooms back out again in search of more food. In the fifteen minutes or thereabouts we sat watching, it zoomed in and out three times. But it does mean that, after a life of never having seen a kingfisher except on television wildlife programmes, I have now finally seen the bird for real.

Not something else to tick off, because we don't do that sort of birdwatching. But it was a grand day out just the same.