Tower Bridge to Battersea

The park was closed today because of the wind, and I had intended to take the Underground to Richmond and walk home along the river. But the District Line was closed for weekend engineering work, so instead I took the Piccadilly and Central to Bank, walked down the north side of the river to Tower Bridge, crossed it, and came back along the south bank as far as Battersea Park (which is not a Royal Park and remains open whatever the weather).

There were no birds of great interest, but it was a pleasant walk. Here are some pictures I took, in chronological order. I only carried the small camera, so some of them are a bit substandard technically.

The famous Ravens at the Tower of London can't be seen from outside, but there was no shortage of Starlings.

Four Canada Geese flew upriver past HMS Belfast, moored near London Bridge.

A few minutes later they came drifting down again rapidly on the falling tide. It seems that the expedition was simply for fun.

It will surprise no one that the Port of London Authority is a Herring Gull.

A hoarding on a building project.

By the time I got to Blackfriars the tide had fallen to expose some beach. Several people were fishing. Heaven knows what they were catching, but at least the Thames is now clean enough to have fish in it. It was completely dead when I was small in the 1950s.

Feral Pigeons poked around on the shore undaunted by the choppy waves.

There were very few waterfowl this far into the city, but a few Mallards could be seen at Blackfriars Bridge.

The first and only Cormorant perched on a buoy, appropriately next to the House of Commons.

Black-Headed Gulls gathered on the shore at Lambeth.

Tideway Village, a motley collection of houseboats at Nine Elms, was engulfed by the huge recent building development here and I thought it had gone. So it was pleasing to see that it's still there, though slightly reduced. The Red-and-Green Macaw on the shipping container at top left isn't real, and I have my doubts about the horse.

This old Lowestoft trawler has a dashing new figurehead and a lawn on the foredeck.

You can now walk along the south bank almost all the way, apart from a short section just downstream from Battersea Power Station which is still under development. And you can go past Battersea Power Station on the river side, something you could never do before. The huge and imposing building, opened in 1933, was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, grandson of George Gilbert Scott who designed the Albert Memorial among many other buildings. Giles also designed Bankside Power Station, now the Tate Modern art gallery, and London's red telephone boxes. Battersea Power Station closed in 1982 and lay derelict for decades, but is now open again as an entertainment complex.

I went to the lake in Battersea Park hoping to find some Mandarins, which were numerous at my last visit some months ago. But they have all flown away. There were Mallards, Pochards, Shovellers and a few Gadwalls.

The lake in is quite small but there is room for a pair of Great Crested Grebes, which have one chick. Shoveller drakes can be seen in the background.

A young Grey Heron stood on the shore. There is a thriving heronry on an island in the lake.

A dummy Long-Eared Owl on the pedalos was intened to scare off the gulls, which it didn't. It had a pivoting head which turned in the wind like a weathervane.

There is a large colony of Carrion Crows in the park and across the Thames in the gardens of the Royal Hospital. At low tide they disport themselves on the shore.

Then back home across Albert Bridge after a good walk.