Not what I expected to find…

The first stop of this new adventure is London, and I had some time yesterday afternoon to go out looking for wildlife, as you know I like to do, so here’s a familiar face from my days in South Holland: a European robin.

There are water features here, so we shouldn’t be surprised that I also saw a few Eurasian coots, …

and a grey heron.

This green-winged teal drake is a little bit of a pleasant surprise, however. I did see them in South Holland, but not very often.

There were also a couple of barnacle geese, which I also saw in south Holland, but only once, so real treats.

This next bird threw me for a loop. It’s a great white pelican, and ebird considers them “rare” here, but maybe a few flew in and never left. Right? What a lucky find!

Then it really got weird. Here’s a Hawaiian goose (Branta sandvicensis), which is considered “critically imperiled in United States,” and I highly doubt just flew here.

That’s when I finally saw the signage about the “long tradition of keeping exotic wildfoul that continues to this day.” Thus, seeing these rarities is about the same as seeing lions at the zoo. Dang.

Oh well. They were all fun to see, anyway.