I believe it’s a symptom of getting old that I become less apologetic about being sentimental about animals. And birds. And especially birds who evidently have something a lot like a romantic relationship. Like these two, for instance.
Or, these two:
I encountered these two love-birds in Regents Park, in April 2005. This being after I had descending from Primrose Hill, where I had been photoing the Big Things of central London, from a great distance, with a camera that needed to be a lot better. At the time, it was the Big Thing photos that continued to interest me, and not these birds at all, until now. And while I was photoing them, I was probably just as interested in how that fence was reflected in the water as I was in the birds.
Just as there is confusion about whether the two birds by the river, linked to above in this, were ducks or geese, so too, these “swans” would appear really to be geese, approximately speaking. And according to this piece, geese can live for as much as twenty years. So, this Evening Standard piece dated January 2013, also about a pair of black swans in Regents Park, is probably about the couple I photoed.
If so, it seems that the birds I photoed split up, were then reunited, and then ended as a couple when the lady black swan got killed by a fox. Foxes eh? Cute, but no respect for bird rights.
I have a story here.
Just north of Stoke Newington, there is a winding section of the New River between Finsbury Park and The Castle Climbing Centre. This is right next to some wetlands. As I was walking the new river, I stopped and took a series of photos of geese and swans and various other birds. On the other side of the path was some rather drab public housing which did have some open gardens, and in one of these gardens were a couple of young men drinking beer. The decided to mock me and laugh at me for having enthusiastically taken photographs of birds for a few minutes.
As it happens, this section of path is also part of the Capital Ring, and a couple of years later I walked that path and therefore walked the same section again. The rather drab public housing had since been demolished and a new development was being constructed there. This caused me to feel satisfaction.