A Sad Sight

This lunchtime, I was walking by the water garden in Kensington Gardens when one of the gardeners passed by, holding a wide wooden rake before him. Cradled between the handle and the upturned tines was a dead Moorhen, bedraggled but still beautiful, its olive-green legs in the air. He had found it, he told me, under the ice, frozen stiff. We briefly mourned the 'poor thing' and its sad fate, and he took it away to dispose of its mortal remains. This winter has been very late, but bitter.