After last Saturday's walk, the visitor centre was a hub of hungry animals. The morning's visitors were packed into the theatrette for a dose of crabby tales, while less attentive guests gathered by the gangways to restore collective spirits. Despite the crowd, the dense square of vegetation between the showroom and cafeteria proved to be a rich foraging ground for a young male dove. Peckish and persistent in his repeated surveys for midday morsels, the bird drew scant attention from groups that flocked toward larger attractions or walkers too weary to lift their eyes for the weight of yet another sighting.
More often (or rarely) encountered as a flash of green that erupts from a lonely path, emerald doves scour the forest floor for the fallen fruit of the bloom. This individual bore on one leg the cold ring of a earlier encounter with foul fingers. He was, however, disinclined to betray past trauma and picked his way to within a footstep of well-occupied benches. Inflamed with enthusiasm, a trio of ladies stomped through the shrubbery in a merry chase for close-up memories. The hunt was cut short by the arrival of a van laden with styrofoam deliveries. By then, the dove had fled to the fringing pond, where the stir of lazy lizards drove it further askew to plunder fresh patches of litter.
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