Friday, December 25, 2009

Don't feed the birds: Trafalgar Square



Christmas Day in London brought me to Trafalgar square where I watched people taking pictures with lions and climbing on the Battle of Trafalgar's memorial statue.

Not long after arriving, I noticed a young boy trying to get the abundant pigeons to eat out of his hand. They wouldn't have it, so he started throwing the bread and the birds began their decent. Not only did the pigeons come, but seagulls too, and then there was a battle for the food.

Now, most reasonable children would have been overwhelmed by pigeons flying at their face and landing on them, and most sensible parents would have tried to put a stop to the nonesense of dirty birds landing on their child. But ... neither of these things happened. Maybe it was the Christmas spirit, or maybe it was just intrigue, but the boy wasn't frightened and his parents didn't tell him no. Instead, he grabbed more bread and started tossing it. Finally, the boy began to get worried when the pigeons stopped dispersing after the food was gone and started crowding around him. They are not completely dumb birds, they knew who was giving them food and started coming up to ask for more. The boy, fed up and no longer willing to have birds fly around him, eventually started stomping at the birds, like he wanted to crush one - wonderful Christmas thoughts, crushed pigeons ...

2 comments:

  1. Had not expected any entries while you are still traveling but it is good to hear from you. London seems like fun, birds and all and we wondered what you had for Chritmas dinner? Or did you feed it to the pidgeons?

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  2. Christmas dinner was a hodge-podge of food. The host at the hostel gave us some British Christmas food which reminded me of Thanksgiving - Turkey, some sort of stuffing, and I discovered I LOVE parsnip soup :) I also tried a Hungarian Christmas dish. Overall the food was quite good and the pigeons got none!

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