Archive For The “United Kingdom” Category
So what did I do on my summer “vacation”? I am (semi) retired, so it isn’t a formal vacation, but I did have some relaxing down time on my trip to England in June. After attending a conference in Liverpool, I went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Julius Caesar, then spent some time with cousins in Oxfordshire and finally went to London to see some shows and some friends. I didn’t set out to concentrate on bird photography but that was what the photographic gods provided,
Stratford-upon-Avon
The River Avon (the famous one in Warwickshire) with its swans and the town of Stratford-upon-Avon. (Robin Rowland)
A raven perching in a weeping willow on the banks of the River Avon. (Robin Rowland)
A pair of rooks perch on a bare branch overlooking the River Avon. (Robin Rowland)
A grey heron in a park on the banks of the River Avon. I usually photograph their cousins the great blue herons in our much wilder Kitimat River estuary. The grey heron resembles the great blue but is a bit smaller, with no brown feathers and more grey than blue. (Robin Rowland)
A moorhen among the reeds of the River Avon. (Robin Rowland)
Oxfordshire Upper Thames River
The upper Thames River near King’s Lock, Oxfordshire, one of the 45 locks on the Thames from London to the river mouth. (Robin Rowland)
A common tern flies over the Thames. (Robin Rowland)
A wood pigeon in flight in one of the upper Thames’ locks. (Robin Rowland)
A pied wagtail (also known as a white wagtail) looking for opportunities at one of the Thames’ locks. (Robin Rowland)
A flock of greylag geese on the Thames. (Robin Rowland)
A greylag goose looks out from the shore grass. (Robin Rowland)
A narrow boat moored on the banks of the Thames–they have to fit through the narrowest locks. (Robin Rowland)
A hooded crow flies over the Thames. (Robin Rowland)
A red kite high above the fields of Oxfordshire. (Robin Rowland)
A magnificent crested grebe. (Robin Rowland)
A black-necked grebe on the River Thames. (Robin Rowland)
A family of greylag geese. (Robin Rowland)
A coot in Farmoor Reservoir. (Robin Rowland)
A carrion crow flying over Farmoor reservoir. (Robin Rowland)
Our route in the Miss Moffat II along the Upper Thames River. King’s Lock is at the beginning of the line following the route of the river and the Farmoor Reservoir is the large body of water in the lower left (where we stopped for lunch). Wytham Woods are the wooded area roughly to the right of the river.
Wytham Woods – Oxfordshire
Wytham Woods are an area of ancient semi-natural woodland to the west of Oxford, UK, owned by the University of Oxford and used for environmental research for the past sixty years, including climate change research for the past eighteen. Hiking is permitted by special permit.
Tangled trunks in Wythams Wood, Oxfordshire (Robin Rowland)
My namesake, an English robin, perches on a branch in Wytham Wood, Oxfordshire. (Robin Rowland)
The Serpentine – London
The Serpentine is a small lake between Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens in London.
A moorhen on a take off run in London’s Serpentine pond. (Robin Rowland)
The First World War began one hundred years ago tonight; a war that eventually killed 16 million people, including 10 million serving in various armed forces.
This is just one story of a young Canadian flyer in the Royal Navy Air Service who died not in combat, but from an aircraft accident in 1917. H. Laurence (or Lawrence) Crowe of Toronto, aged 20.
On August 5, 2005 I had paid a visit to my parents’ grave in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery and then walked around for a while on that pleasant summer afternoon.
I spotted a large memorial, a statue, with a broken hand, and both the statue itself and the fact that it was broken reminded me somewhat of the Parthenon Freize, (the infamous Elgin Marbles). Moving closer (and using the small digital point and shoot I was carrying everywhere in 2005) I saw that the statue was both “ancient” and modern, the figure was bare chested, heroic, like the figures from ancient Greece, but around his waist was supporting what may be a short kilt is a modern belt. I’m not sure about the headgear, it doesn’t really look like a flier’s helmet, a Greek helm or a naval officer’s cap.
Adding to the heroic nature of the memorial is the inscription: Quit Ye Like Men. Be Strong. Although we call many “heroes” today, 1917 was a time when a classical heroic metaphor was still part of the culture.
So watching the news items tonight on the beginning of the First World War, I wondered who was this young man?
You’ll find a profile of Harry Laurence Crowe on the Veteran’s Affairs Canada Virtual Memorial site.
He was born on April 12, 1897, in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, which means that when the war broke out a century ago he would have been 17 years old. He attended St. Andrew`s College in Toronto and the University of Toronto, before deciding to become a pilot. He went to a flying school in Newport News, Virginia then on to England and joined the Royal Navy in Plymouth. On June 22, 1917, after just three months service, he was searching for a German submarine off the coast of Devonshire and was returning to base flying at 1500 feet and 500 metres from shore at Prawle Point when the plane suddenly nose dived into the ocean, probably due to mechanical failure.
There was a memorial service in Plymouth which included a large model of an aircraft covered in flowers.
Unusual for the time, his remains were returned to Toronto, and according to a Toronto Star report on August 8, 1917, the funeral with full military honours was held at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. There was a second plane as part of that memorial, the Star reported:
This floral aeroplane was made from the wrecked portions of an aeroplane Lieut. Crowe was fond of using, but not the one from which he was killed. The wings spread out about five feet covered in forget-me-nots. The aeroplane body was about six feet also covered in blue flowers with sprays of white ones. An accurate model it was in every way from the carriage wheels below to the curved propeller in front.
There was a firing party, a bugler performed The Last Post and two aircraft made a flypast over Mt. Pleasant.
In 1918, the University of Toronto student newspaper The Varsity published a memorial to Crowe and other war dead. As you can see from the photograph from The Varsity, the sculpture did capture a likeness of the young aviator.
Harry Crowe – From: The Varsity Magazine Supplement published by The Students Administrative Council, University of Toronto 1918.
In all my journalism career, I was never assigned to cover the Queen on a Royal Visit (always stuck in the office). But as Her Majesty celebrates her Jubilee this weekend, I had a vague memory that, when I was living in London, I had managed to get a few somewhat close shots of the Queen. ( I did shoot the Royal Wedding from The Strand but didn’t get anything that great of the Royals) So I hunted through my slide boxes, to see if my memory was correct and what the pix were like.
The shots were taken at a racetrack in England likely sometime in July or early August, 1980, which track I can’t remember and my notes are long gone. I had worked in the UK for about a year and was about to leave to return to Canada after getting a job offer back home in Toronto. My friends offered to drive me around the countryside to some of the sites I wanted to see. Somehow, we ended up at this race track just as the Royal Family appeared. And luckily, there I was in the stands not too far from the track and was able to get some shots. Not the best, but in retrospect, perhaps revealing. Camera Minolta SRT 101, 135mm lens, Ektachrome film.
So here we have two ladies-in-waiting (?) one in an over-feathered white hat, the second in a broad brimmed black hat and the Queen. This would have been taken about a month after the royal wedding.
The Queen, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and two dudes in top hats. I also like the old lady in the background grabbing the rail so she can get a better view.