Crows Surrounded Me in Lumphini

I still have a couple of hours of sunlight after I shopped in Siam Center. The time is long enough so I used it to visit two places in the City of Bangkok. These places are the Holy Redeemer Church, which I talked about in the previous post, and Lumphini Park.

I read in a tourist guide booklet that Lumphini Park was created according to the wishes of King Rama VI. The park was then named after Lumbini, the birth place of Buddha in Nepal.* The park is a popular place for joggers, bikers and other health enthusiasts. The best thing is that there is no entrance fee for this park.

An afternoon at Lumphini Park.

Silence prevailed in Lumphini Park. I had a moment to take a rest, to breathe. Looking at the lake and slow movement of the swan boats somehow soothed me. Indeed it is good to sit and relax some of the time.

I'm enjoying the silence until a pair of crows started fighting for some trash. It is one of the rare times that I see this noisy bird. I watched the crows peck and scratch one another then another crow came then another and another then the whole place became very noisy. There are crows on the trees. Crows on the ground. Crows on the benches. Crows everywhere!

I made a move to take a photo but they suddenly flew away. It seems like these “harbingers of death” are still afraid of humans.

I noticed, as I walked around, that Lumphini Park is a crow territory. Other birds, like pigeons, may be seen in the park but the crows dominate them all. The crows like Lumphini Park because it is wide enough and human visitors provide food.

It is my first time to photograph crows and I had a hard time because they keep on moving. Now I know why photographers of National Geographic have “ultra-zoom” cameras. Animals can be photographed well if the photographer is very far away.

I think I should invest well in cameras and lenses if I want to become a professional “nature photographer”.

Of the many photos that I took of the crows, I think that this is the best:

This is one cool crow playing with a stick.

I'll be talking about Lumphini Park in the next blog post.

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*Wikipedia article for Lumphini Park.