Richmond Park
Friday, the 13th of September a visit to Richmond Park.
Richmond Park is the largest of the 10 Royal Parks in London. It originated as a hunting Park for Henry the eighth and is fairly close to Hampton Court. The park is renowned for the wild deer, there are approximately 800. From mid September through to mid mid November is the rutting season where the stags compete to be the dominant males.
The weather forecast for a clear sunny day very light winds, and an early morning temperature of about 5°C. This promised mist over the lower parts of the park.
Last year I visited the park a couple of times and came away with some atmospheric photographs of some of the stags. However, I didn’t get any good shots of the stags rutting and that was my objective for this and what will be subsequent visits this year.
At the start of the day the deer tend to be in the woods which is very low lighting conditions, as the Sun rises they could be found in amongst ferns and on the grass. As it gets closer to 9 o’clock, the dog walkers joggers and cyclist appear. at this point the deer tend to either move back into the woods or congregate in large groups in the middle of the open spaces.
I arrived at 6:45 am having left home at 5:30 am. Although the park is due to open for vehicles at 7 am, the gates were open. I drove down and across the park to the Pen Ponds car park. The walk from the car park down to the ponds is about a quarter of a mile, no deer was seen at this time. I walked the length of the ponds to the woods at the easterly end and found some young stags in the woods. I later proceeded to the grasslands on the way back up to Penponds where a larger herd and larger stags were to be found.
It was a lovely morning, beautiful a lovely walk, and some decent but not award-winning photographs. I did not see any rutting stags. I think I’m probably a week early so I will return again.
