If there’s one thing I’ve come to have truly mixed feelings about in London, it’s the climate. In autumn, London was quite temperate, though typically overcast, with only the occasional rainfall. I remember thinking to myself that people were exaggerating when they warned me about the weather; for the first few months of my time here, I didn’t even have an umbrella at all! Ever since I came back after winter break in January though, I’ve learned that I just needed to wait a little bit longer for the full London experience to strike.
Most of this term so far has been drenched in rainfall. The rain isn’t a downpour usually, but a bothersome near-constant spritzing of rain that is just enough to require an umbrella but not enough to make me stay inside. Aside from the rain, it’s very windy in London and when paired with the high chance of rain, the weather can get a little bit miserable. Luckily enough, though, it hasn’t been very cold here; it averages around the mid 30s to low 40s in temperature, which is a relief when compared to the frigid weather Wellesley has been seeing as of late!
I’ve been finding some rare clear-skied days to journal at my sit spot, but honestly it has been a little bit difficult to coordinate! Many days that I’ve ‘had time’ (more than an hour) to journal, the weather has been grim – either it’s actively raining, or it’s rained recently enough that it’s not ideal to sit down outside. The park my sit spot is in, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, has very little natural rain cover because of its curated nature, with lots of open grass and shrubbery as opposed to mature trees, and even if it did, the trees are still barren!
This week, I spent some time on the bench at my sit spot listening to the happy chatter of the passers by and enjoying the occasional ‘squawks’ of the ravens. The ravens have a very distinct call – it’s almost creaky in texture and is quite abrasive! They hop about the park, picking at the grass for insects and calling to each other from sparse tree branches, and I think hardly a moment passes without at least one chiming in. The ravens are not perturbed by the presence of people at all, and will happily go about their business jumping up to the rims of the garbage bins and the backs of benches.
Ravens squabbling over the takeaway container!
For the first part of my journal entry, I sketched two ravens who I saw messing around with a takeaway container (that I think was from the pasta place down the street). They took turns pecking at the container, then lifting it into the air and dropping it back down again. As I wrote in my journal, they exchanged which of them was to perform vigilance ‘head up’ behavior while the other was prodding the container. I was curious about why the birds were interested in the container, if it seemed like there wasn’t food inside – perhaps they feel like they have to fully examine the item before giving up on there being any remaining morsels!
I thought these ravens were adorable, and even as I was writing my journal entry, more ravens flocked around them to check out what they were doing. At a certain point, a large group of pigeons settled down on the grass nearby as well, though they didn’t seem to express any interest in the container. I wonder if they feel like they cannot compete with the ravens for access to a potential resource as such. Of course, this scene raises questions about what these ravens may accidentally ingest due to littering; could they swallow some of the cardboard or metal used in constructing the container?
