Mandarins in the Isabella Plantation

We were in London for a few days. We went to Kew Gardens and stayed in a hotel near Richmond Park. Richmond Park is a piece of preserved countryside on the Thames just to the left of London and it's a fantastic nature-packed place. There are lots of birds tweeting, and squirrels and most strikingly, there are many deer lazing in the shade under the trees, free to wander around the grounds. They made me feel slightly uncomfortable because they were so big and if they decided they wanted to kill me, they probably could quite easily, if they worked as a team. Nevertheless they were very beautiful.

We trekked across the central wasteland of the park, through the middle of the groups of deer. One walked purposely towards us. Luckily it passed us by uninterested. It was weedy and dusty and there were swamps and few trees. The sun was hot. It felt a bit desolate and unprotected, but we continued because we wanted to get to the garden on the other side.

This garden was the Isabella Plantation. It had been recommended to us by Robin, the friendliest concierge ever. He said there were rhododendrons and azaleas there so brightly colourful that they hurt your eyes. When we got there, the garden was a stark contrast to the barren dusty fields we had walked through on the way. Everywhere was bounded by a deep healthy green. Trees and bushes extended their fingers over the pathways and a narrow stream ran hidden through the centre. It was like a secret Alice in Wonderland oasis; it had the balmy summer atmosphere of the BBC version from the sixties.

There were a few ponds hidden around the place, but we could only find one. It was full of ducks, some with their ducklings trailing behind, looking very cute and fluffy and vulnerable. There were mallards, coots, moorhens, a shelduck, a few pochards and the best duck ever(?): the mandarin. The mandarin duck is probably, like the rhododendrons and azaleas, so richly colourful it hurts your eyes. The male has all the colours of the rainbow in his feathers. There was one hanging out in the pond with his wife, who was the dowdy brown version of her husband. They were waiting patiently in line for the bread being offered to them by old ladies. 

We saw the mandarin couple later on lazing on the grass in the shade of a tree. Unlike the other ducks, they were silent and it seemed like they were cut off from the other ducks, as if the mandarin male was disapproved of by the other, plainer ducks, for being too ostentatious.