Sunday bird blogging

Feeding time along the river in Windsor.

There were carts selling packets of food for the swans, and some children were tossing the pellets into the water here. What made me laugh was the way the Canada geese were completely shut out from the treats, having finally encountered birds that were bigger and meaner than they are.

English skies

I've always loved the insane variability of English weather. It's raining! Wait, no it's not. Is that the sun? Oops, sorry, no.

I took these two pictures from the same bridge over the Thames just a few minutes apart. Different skies, different moods.

And still more boats

 

More boats along the Thames

There are a variety of narrowboats and houseboats docked along the side of the Thames. Some of them seemed to be leisure crafts, though I only saw one or two actually out on the water, and some of them seemed to be residences.

I took the picture on the left from the water, on a Tea on the Thames cruise, where alas the high blood sugar brought on by consuming multiple scones with cream and jam apparently left me incapable of taking a decent photograph. I saw the bâteau ivre on the right on one of my walks.

Lost boat

In an inlet off the Thames path, this boat from Balliol College. There were college boathouses all along the water there, so I'm sure someone knew the boat was there.

Sunday bird blogging

There were songbirds in Oxford but I heard them rather than saw them. Mostly it was crows and woodpigeons, with an occasional magpie or blackbird, and I didn't get any great pictures.

So here is a somewhat blurry picture of a swan family on the Thames that I had to lean out of a boat to take. At least the cygnets are adorable.

Of course not everyone is into rowing

The paths are full of runners, walkers and bikers, and those who prefer more sedentary Sundays.

Sunday morning on the Thames

There are two rivers in Oxford: the Cherwell, which is small and sedate, suitable for punts and kayaks and paddleboats, and the Thames. This part of the Thames is supposedly “really” called the Isis, only acquiring the more famous name when it merges with a river called the Thame (singular) south of Oxford. But all the signs in the city refer to the river as the Thames, and the paths along it as the Thames walk, so much as I like the idea of a River Isis flowing past the dreaming spires of Oxford, there seems to be a consensus that this is the Thames, no matter what the guidebooks say.

The two rivers merge just below Christ Church Meadow. The buildings in the background of this picture are some of the boat houses of the various colleges at the point where the two rivers meet, and the conjoined river leaves all the frivolous punts and paddleboats behind. This is a serious river, full of serious rowers (and the occasional tour boat.)

I had no idea that Oxford was so full of waterways—there's a canal in addition to the rivers, and tributaries and channels and small inlets branching off of all of them. The walkways along the Thames are full of small arched Venetian bridges spanning all the small bodies of water feeding the larger ones. It's completely charming, and I particularly like that I can take the Thames Walk from my hotel to the Folly Bridge when I'm going to the city center, instead of walking on the street the whole way.

Sunday bird blogging

A swan in the Thames at Windsor.

I spent the night at Heathrow on my way home from Harwich, and spent the afternoon walking around Windsor and Eton, trying and failing to get a picture of the students in their frock coats. The swans were more cooperative.