Richmond Park

 With two of the offspring in London Town at the same time, we decided to meet up with them in Richmond Park, haven't seen either of them since March so was a good excuse to visit, we arrived just after 8 o'clock and parked in the Robin Hood carpark, the number of cyclist was mental, never seen so much Lycra and not all of it flattering!! Managed to navigate the parks roads without killing any of em! The youngsters weren't arriving until later, bizarrely it was quicker for us to get here from deepest Sussex as to travel across London on public transport, down to lot's of closures apparently, so we headed out in search of Wildlife two main targets, Deer and Parakeets!! Parakeets were easy to find, just follow the noise, they were flying around all over, getting good pics was another story!! We also found a nice herd of Red Deer with a couple of cracking Stags, these animals are amazingly tolerant of people, so you have a rather weird situation of our largest land mammal in very close proximity to lots of people, indeed was difficult to crop the pics to get the joggers and cyclists out of em!😲

Parakeet zooming about

Red Deer

Red Deer

Nice Rack

Having a Bellow

It is an amazing experience being so close to such big animals can't really think of anything else quite like it, usually you come a cross a Deer ,they see you and bolt!

We continued to Pen Ponds another herd of Red Deer on the way this one seem to be mainly females with youngsters and young males their antlers much less spectacular!! There were also some Green Woodpeckers but pics were at a premium.

Green Woodpecker

Young Male Red Deer

Mother and youngster

Female Red Deer Potrait

Having a Swim

On a tip from a photographer we turned left just before the ponds and followed the bank to the trees, lots of Parakeets calling, in and out of holes in the trees and posing ok ,though never quite in the right light or just behind a twig/leaf I know excuses excuses!!😁

Parakeet

Parakeet

Parakeets

Having filled our boots with Parakeet pics we continued round the lake ,I heard a Kestrel calling and seconds later the bird appeared having a right old ding-dong with a crow!

Kestrel/Crow Ding-Dong

A couple of minutes later we came across the bird, dusting itself down on top of a dead tree ,this is the third insanely tame Kestrel I've connected with this year, at this rate next year's calendar gonna be 12 Kestrel portraits!! Fantastic Birds!!

Kestrel

Kestrel

Kestrel

Kestrel

By now we were on the path between the ponds, waiting for the progeny who were now in the park!! I was hoping for Hobbies over the pond had them here a few years ago but it wasn't to be despite the large numbers of Dragonflies knocking about. We made do with a few of the Wildfowl on the ponds, strange with big signs mentioning Blue/Green Algae and the water thick with it and not a pleasant smell emanating from the water, people were letting their kids play at the waters edge and their dogs swim in it!

Great Crested Grebe several about on the ponds

Egyptian Goose several about

Tufted Duck

Pochard taking bread!

Pochard

The Kids duly arrived and we headed back to the car, where we enjoyed the delicious picnic Margie had prepared enhanced by some very nice Chocolate Brownies handmade by the young-uns ,who were threatening not to give me the recipe, but I wheedled it out of them with a mixture of begging and threats!! 😲

After the picnic, we headed out to find some more deer, so all present could see them, huge amounts of people were now present in the glorious sunshine but the park is big enough and it seemed most were social distancing in small groups, we headed up to a high point to look around, good views of Wembley Stadium and the Shard reminding us of how close we were to Central London. The other way were glorious views of the parkland! In this area I found a Mistle Thrush, a Green Woodpecker whooshed through and another Parakeet showed well.

Green Woodpecker not hanging about

Parakeet

Wembley Stadium

The Shard

Mistle Thrush

Parkland Views by Margie

Park Views by Margie

We looped around the lakes and headed back towards the car ,we finally ran into another herd of deer which pleased all concerned!

Red Deer

Young Red Deer

Deer Portrait

Think this one may be a Fallow Deer

Fallow Deer?

Fallow Deer?

And that was about it, a Sparrowhawk soared in the distance and some deer were having a bath in a mudhole, a Stonechat was flitting about on the ferns, I was flagging now, we reached the car at this point I realised my recently repaired bins had fallen apart, gutted and despite retracing my steps halfway around the park I couldn't find the eye piece, back to Zeiss they go!

Sparrowhawk

Deer in the Mud

Deer in the bath

Delicious Brownie

A very nice day all round, I find it a strange place, so many people but quite good for some wildlife and no doubt an earlier in the day, midweek visit would be even more productive!!