As Ecology Consultancy’s office manager I spend most of my time tied to the desk. I sometimes hanker for the great outdoors, mostly in the summer when the sun is shining, but when it’s pouring down I’m happy to be staring at the computer screen.
This doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in the environment, I just like it when I can experience it with minimum effort, so it is always a joy on my walks to and from work when I encounter nature in the raw.
Walking along the southbank of the Thames in the early morning recently I watched two peregrines swooping and diving around the Tate Modern chimney, before one went off up river, no doubt in search of breakfast. The river is a constant source of natural entertainment, from the starlings roosting under Westminster Bridge or on the London Eye, to crows stealing eels from the beaks of gulls and being mobbed as a result and the cormorants posing for photos on the numerous mooring posts.
There is also the rogue fox seen slipping out of the Savoy Hotel in the early morning, no doubt having dined in style, on his way to the park to sleep off the excess.
My journey home from the tube in east London is no less eventful, an enterprising sparrowhawk has worked out that there are numerous takeaway opportunities in the front garden hedges and shrubs and can often be seen hedge hopping its way up the road.
I could go on about doing press-ups in the park nose to nose with earthworms or being ‘buzzed’ by bats when running round the Serpentine, but then you might start to think I never do any work…….
