St James' Park

St James' Park in London, at first glance, looks pretty standard; but once you get to the lake, there are some really interesting ornamental ducks. In the 1930's, oriental ducks were introduced to St James' Park; today there are over 250 waterfowl on the lake. The most exotic of these are certainly the famous great white pelicans that once ate a pigeon (not for the faint hearted). There are 4 pelicans in the park today; clipped on one wing to stop them from escaping into London and causing chaos- which they used to do quite regularly, flying over to London Zoo to steal fish from the birds there! We were lucky enough to come across all four pelicans on our London adventures.

It's not just the pelicans that are awesome about St James' Park though. There are loads of smaller ducks that aren't found very frequently, and are really very cool. On an island in the middle of the main lake there's a bird breeding sanctuary. Visitors can't go and see the birds breeding there, but on the water it's easy to spot red-crested pochard, wigeon, mandarins (ducks, not small oranges), egyptian geese and possibly my new favourite, the fulvous whistling duck. The park also has booming populations of canada goose, swan (black as well as white), shag, heron, coot, moorhen, mallard and heron. Despite being in the middle of London, there's a huge range of birdlife! There's about 114 species annually, with around 90 extra rarer birds on top of that that sometimes visit.

 

The squirrels are well known for being some of the boldest, tamest around in this park as well. Bring peanuts at your peril, because they're absolutely everywhere, and won't hesitate to come and mob you for free food. They don't care at all if you creep up to get some close photos, although they are very curious! Too close, and they'll swipe at your camera lens.

 

It then leapt on my arm before skittering away when it found it had made a mistake

The pigeons are very tame too, and always on the lookout for food. We didn't even have anything to feed them, and they were all over our feet!

The best time to see the waterfowl is between November and April, because the drakes (male ducks) are in their breeding plumage, so are really brightly coloured. There are a couple of small cafes in the park to go and warm up in afterwards if it's a chilly day, so it's definitely something awesome to go and check out if you're ever in London for the day!

We went on a bear hunt...

This isn't really my normal sort of post, but at the moment London is covered in bears. Paddington bears! There have been a lot of sculpture trails in the past (you name it, there's probably been a sculpture trail of it), but these ones are pretty cute to go and visit a few. We actually came across another couple who were running around visiting all the sculptures within one day, who had already visited 20 when we found our first in Covent Garden at 10.30am! They were hoping to end up at the O2 dome by the end of the day having seen them all.

Covent Garden, Rainbow

The bears are in London from the 4th November to the 30th December, so they're still around for a while to go and visit over Christmas! There's 50 spread across London, a lot of them around Soho and Marylebone, so that's a good place to start if you want to see a lot in one go. There are also London Buses all over the place too, so tying the two together as one big sculpture trail could be a great day out exploring bits of London you might not normally end up in! We were heading towards the British Museum anyway, so a cheerful bear was an extra bonus to find outside.

British Museum, Bear Necessities

After running around the British Museum for a couple of hours, and then back to Covent Garden for lunch, the next place we happened across a Paddington was Regent's Park. I've got another post coming about Regent's Park itself, and its fantastic collection of ornamental waterfowl. This little bear was sitting outside by the Cabinet War Rooms though, providing more interesting stuff to look at outside the park as well as inside it.

Regent's Park, Paddington Jack

After wandering around Regent's Park a little bit, we headed back towards South Bank for the evening to see the Christmas Market via Big Ben. We managed to find another bear by surprise, which I think was my favourite one of the day. He was attracting a lot of interest when we turned up (which I think made him easier to find), but we managed to snap a quick picture when a few people wandered off again.

Westminster, Good News Bear