Psittacula krameri
London’s changed. London’s always changing; a city that stays
constant is a city barely worth the name – but living in a city you don’t tend
to notice the changes so readily, just as when you live with a puppy or a
kitten you don’t notice it growing: change most often happens gradually, rather
than suddenly, and is best observed not by being in close proximity to the
thing upon which it is acting but by sampling that thing – an animal, a city –
from time to time. London’s changed, as all cities must change,
and after last being there in 2009, when I visited it again last month the
changes were striking.
It was a different city in 2009,
too, from what it had been the previous time I’d been there. I’ve been visiting England, and particularly
London and the Home Counties, every few years for my entire life; but for most
of that time I was a child, or very young, and the sphere of my interest and
attention did not extend very far beyond my own self. As an adult I’m less interested in myself and
more interested in the wider world, and thus I’m more inclined to notice what’s
happening around me. I’m more attuned to
change.
The last time I was in London was
in the immediate aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. I’d come from Australia, where we thought
things were pretty bad, but walking through Bloomsbury from the flat I was
staying in to the British Museum, a distance of only a few blocks, and seeing
the scores of empty offices and buildings freshly available for lease on that
five-minute walk, made me appreciate how lightly Australia had escaped.
When I arrived in London this
time, just a few weeks ago, it was Spring, or it was supposed to be Spring; but
a month and a half into the season snow was still falling, the trees were still
wearing their winter twigs, daffodils and jonquils were pushing through the
earth but they seemed to have made a mistake: even in April they seemed to have
come early. No other flowers were
joining them. The Londoners were still
huddled into their winter coats and scarves.
They were sick of it. Everybody was;
everybody spoke of how there’s been no Spring this year, and how the seasons
have become so wildly unpredictable, and how surely this means they’ll get a
hot summer as recompense – as if the seasons are give-and-take, as if weather
is equitable. I read that lambs are
dying in the fields; that there’s nothing for them to eat. I wrapped my scarf around my neck and relished
the cold weather that I love but something else I’d read recently was nagging
at me: somebody wrote that they can’t enjoy winter any more because they couldn’t
help thinking of all the animals dying out there in the harsh, frosted woods.
I was travelling with my family,
and a family friend, and her young son.
We stayed in central London, in fact again only five minutes walk from
the British Museum, but in the other direction.
We arrived from Heathrow early in the morning and besides the cold nearly
the first thing we noticed is that London
had discovered coffee. I’ve read about
it online, too: how the ever-continuing influx of Australians and New
Zealanders have brought the coffee culture from their homelands to London. Young Australians and New Zealanders used to
come from to London
to earn pounds; now the pound has crashed and they’ve all opened cafés
instead. Perhaps the economy left them
with no other choice: seemingly every time you open a newspaper there’s a story
about somebody who never thought they’d be doing the work they’re doing;
somebody who left their previous office-bound life behind. In Canberra, fifteen or so years ago, the
federal government forced thousands of public servants into redundancy and the
economy of the city diversified and changed; suffered, too. People take the options they’re left with. People move far from home or far from their
comfort zone and they make a go of it.
When during my week in London I got some time to
myself I caught the Tube to Fulham to visit a particular shop. I’m not used to reading maps of a city as big
as London so I
underestimated the distance from Hammersmith station to the shop and decided to
walk, along Fulham Palace Road. The station complex gave way to shops which gave
way to houses which gave way to shops again; the road meandered like a river
and the buildings on either side were like the cliffs of a gorge. Near Fulham Cemetery I heard a sound,
unfamiliar yet also intrinsically familiar; strange and out-of-place. It sounded like a parrot shrieking and that’s
exactly what it was: I looked up and there was that unmistakable shape, slender
and long-tailed, with pointed wings; it’s a shape I see every day in Australia and I didn’t expect to see against the
cold grey sky of London.
The bird flew into the park next
to the Cemetery. It was bright green,
with a red beak, and I thought it should be easy to identify – how many parrots
can there be in London? But the internet
revealed a baffling – perhaps baffled – array of possible answers. From the colouration and markings I deduced
that the parrot I’d seen must be a Rose-ringed Parakeet, an animal whose
various subspecies are found across south Asia and central Africa
– but the description of the bird seemed too large to be the delicate creature
I observed. No matter, it’s the best
guess I’ve got, and perhaps in this instance – a parrot in London! – the particular species is not so
important.
Not being in a hurry I followed
the parrot into the cemetery; I supposed that it might be looking for a
nest-hollow, the season being spring in name at least. Soon I heard the bird call again and saw it,
sure enough, investigating a hole in a large elm. There were others, too – other birds and
other trees, other hollows. Wherever the
parrots came from, whatever species they are, however they arrived in London, they’re breeding
now – the weather must be horribly alien to them but they seem to be
flourishing. I wonder if they die in
winter, in the snow, more readily than the native birds do – or do their
feathers, those wonderful insulators, keep them warm? Do they feel, in some ancient instinct, that
something’s not right, that they’re not where they should be?
Whatever
they feel, they’re making a go of it.
They’d read some infinitesimal sign in the season’s weather and
something in them had clicked: springtime, time to nest and breed and raise up
the next generation of London
parrots. At some stage they’ll become
native, I suppose, like the Barbary Macaques (Macaca sylvanus) in Gibraltar; like Dingoes
(Canis lupus dingo)
in Australia. The world changes, bit by bit. By the time we left London, after two weeks, the skies were blue,
the trees were beginning to leaf, and the parks were filled with the sound of
people and the sound of birdsong.
Image sourced and adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org
