2022 - August - London - Parks

After a long day at the office or simply exhausting sightseeing, everyone can use a break in the greenery. But in fact, air quality is also an important reason for the creation of parks in big cities.

London is even a pioneer in this regard and has been called the "National Park City" since 2019, the first city in the world! This is a significant award that many metropolises would like to carry. So far, however, only Adelaide has followed suit.

Either way, I can only recommend to every visitor to London to spend at least a few hours of peace and relaxation in one of the many parks. No matter where you are, there is always one nearby and they all make a well-groomed impression.

For example, during our brief visit to London, we visited Regent's Park. It is a proud 166 hectares, but it is of course not possible to explore everything in a short time. And in fact, we only wanted to go to a small part of the park, namely Primrose Hill. This small hill offers a beautiful view of London and is therefore a popular meeting point.

Speaking of meeting points, there is this equally large park in London, where people of various opinions simply stand there and express their views in public. You probably already know what I'm talking about, of course I mean Speakers Corner in Hyde Park.

The fact that the park is now the most famous in London could also be due to the aforementioned meeting point for speeches. It used to be different. The 140 hectare area was used by the former kings as a hunting ground.

Speakers Corner would have been far too crowded for us. We were looking for relaxation and something completely different: ring-necked parakeets!

Yes, they actually live here freely and nest in the trees. Of course, I also know that this is not their native habitat. Just like the grey squirrels, they were released here at some point and have now spread.

Well, now that they are here, we still wanted to observe them in their local natural habitat. That was not as easy as we thought. Everywhere we only saw pigeons and crows. But then we heard their characteristic parakeet calls. And eventually we were able to lure them down with a peanut. As you can see in our photos, they were not our only guests, grey squirrels also joined in, so that we soon had a flock of animals around us.

By the way, it is said that the London ring-necked parakeets meet on sleeping trees in groups of up to 6,000 animals in Hyde Park in the evening. Then it's just like in their actual homeland in Asia: Noisy!