Tag Archives: Richmond park

Jackdaws Searching for Snacks

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We stopped for a small snack at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park after our walk.  We were heading to lunch later, but you don’t want your energy to drop so a cake of some sort is a necessity.  The tables around the café provided plenty of food for the local jackdaw population and they were very keen to get whatever fell from the plates of the customers.  With the sun on them, they looked really cool.  I didn’t know what they were at the time, but the grey heads were quite distinctive, and I did a search later on t identify them.  Funny to learn these things so long after I had lived in the UK.

Deer in the Royal Park

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Richmond Park is famous for its deer.  You don’t have to go far in the park to come across some.  They seem pretty relaxed despite the presence of so many people nearby but I imagine it is a long time since anyone in the park was hunting them, so they don’t see us as a threat anymore.  As we went for a stroll, we came across a few groups of deer busy munching away.  Occasionally, they would look at us as we got closer but their lack of interest most of the time was obvious!

Richmond Park Scenery

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I last visited Richmond Park in 1990 in my last year at university.  I went there with a couple of friends for a day out in the sun.  For some reason, I have not been back since.  Why we never went there, I do not know.  Nancy was quite perplexed to discover such an amazing park that she never got to see when we lived in the UK.  Definitely something we missed out on.

Anyway, be that as it may, we did make the time to have a trip to the park when we went up to Richmond during our UK visit so we could meet up with family and see some other parts of the area.  I really had no idea about the layout of the park.  It was way hillier than I remembered.  We drove through the park for a while and then found a spot to leave the car and take a stroll. 

It is a gorgeous place to wander.  We didn’t have a huge amount of time so weren’t going to walk a long way but we did have a nice stretch of the legs.  Plenty of deer to see in the park but they will get their own post.  Being spring, the trees were starting to look full.  While plenty of people were around, you felt like you were alone quite quickly.  We passed an enclosure that was designed to give the deer their own space.  They didn’t seem too interested in it and were quite comfortable everywhere else!  Our route back brought us to a garden as part of Pembroke Lodge.  This was also the spot with a café which was far more important.  Next time we are back, it would be good to explore the park more extensively.