Spooked

An evening walk in London as the sun was setting over Hyde Park on September 14, 2018.

I remember this day so vividly as this was my last night in London after having lived here for a year. I came to London for my master’s degree and after one year of memories and one of the best years of my life it has come to an end. My flight was leaving early the next morning back to Phoenix, but I wanted one last stroll through one of my favorite London parks, Hyde Park in central London.

I entered the south entrance of Hyde Park near The Albert Memorial. This large golden statue emits a golden shimmer in the setting sun almost as if the statue is saying “welcome and enjoy your time here”. As I walk along the path some of the leaves have fallen as mid-September has now arrived and autumn has started to make an appearance. I pass dog walkers, people reading on benches, and others who also have come to enjoy a peaceful evening stroll through the park.

I come to the west side of Serpentine Lake across from “The Arch” monument, which looks somewhat like a dinosaur bone structure. Serpentine Lake as its name signifies, is a 40-acre snake-like body of water that meanders through Hyde Park. I have been here countless times before to watch the ducks, geese, and swans swim lazily through the lake or come to sit on a bench with my lunch.

On this particular evening, I came to admire Serpentine Lake one last time. I see people feeding the ducks, having an evening picnic in the grass, and a flock of pigeons huddled in the grass pecking at any leftover crumbs or seeds they could find. As I was taking a picture of this scene a dog let out a loud bark and suddenly, all at once, these pigeons swooped off the ground and took to the sky. I am rather lucky that I pushed the button at the right time.

I looked up the collective name for a group of pigeons and found: a flock, a flight, a school, or a band. For this scenario to say a band of pigeons is fitting as it perfectly described the sound of the birds combined with the surprise shrieks from people watching. It sounded like an off-tune band beginning to play. As it were a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, “The Birds”. Fortunately for my sake, these were lazy, park-loving pigeons and not some evil, murderous group of crows. Nevertheless, it still evokes the same sense of panic. When you are taken by surprise by a flock of more than 100 pigeons flapping their wings, cooing loudly, combined with people gasping and shrieking, it is anything but peaceful.

After my pigeon encounter, I started walking east following the lakeside path. I came to Serpentine Bridge, and something caught my eye. At first, I thought nothing of it but then I looked at the bridge again. Wait, are those...pigeons?!

Everything is not as it seems. At first, it may look like an ordinary bridge but take a closer look and you’ll see that the orderly black spots are not some ornamental design, but pigeons! Over 100 pigeons adorn the four arches of this bridge that mark the boundary between Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. As if these pigeons were gatekeepers of the lake for all the swans and ducks to pass. Pigeons usually have a bad reputation as being dirty, pesky, and disgusting but tonight they have disguised themselves in plain sight in the most beautiful way. They all sit evenly spaced and fit seamlessly with the architecture and unless you stopped to look at the bridge, it would be easy to miss. What I love about this photo is that I normally would never have thought to take a picture of pigeons as they aren’t a bird that I associate with being very photogenic. However, in this moment I couldn’t imagine a better scene nor a better memory for my last night in London.

For both these pictures, I used a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS40. Under the Creative Control panel, there is a setting called “miniature effect”, which blurs the peripheral areas of the photo making the subject in the center of the photo as if it were a diorama. Although this effect works best looking down on the subject from above, I like to use this setting to make the focal point clearer, that’s why the birds in the center are more noticeable. I did not edit the photo as I felt the sunlight was a natural photo enhancer and didn’t want to blur the birds or their wings.

And something that I have learned from pigeons and is also a favorite quote of mine is that:

“You have to accept the fact that sometimes you are the pigeon, and sometimes you are the statue.” -Claude Chabrol