London Secret Wildlife - A year in the life of Richmond Park

Photographer captures London’s secret wildlife

A photographer who rose every day before dawn for a year has unlocked the secret world of London's majestic wildlife.

The stunning scenes, which occur right under the noses of the eight million people living in the capital, were captured on camera in a series of incredible pictures.

Dedicated Alex Saberi went out every morning before work to scout out the beautiful sights that most city dwellers would expect to travel to the New Forest or Exmoor to find.

Winter wonderland: The stunning scenes, which occur right under the noses of the eight million people living in the capital, were captured on camera in a series of incredible pictures by dedicated amateur photographer Alex, 34

Family affair: Dear in the snow at Richmond park. A year of getting up before dawn to record the changing seasons had paid off for Alex with collection of stunning photographs

But Alex, 34, travelled around Richmond Park, south west London, on a bicycle to find the fairytale scenes of rutting stags and swans swimming through the eerie dawn mist.

His outstanding shots include pictures of majestic deer roaming placidly under beams of sunlight and rabbits rising from their warren on a dewy morning.

An inquisitive squirrel is caught on camera hunting out his breakfast while a kingfisher surveys the silent morning.

Alex, a web designer from Putney, said: 'I used to live right next to the park and I would go every morning to take pictures.

Mysterious

Gulls on a frozen winter lake

Crows in the freezing winter

Swans on a misty lake

A winter scene and a kingfisher captured resting on a tree

Deer in a spring glade

'I'd wake up before it got light and head out there. If it was a work day, I'd go for an hour then cycle straight to the station to catch the train.

'It's a magical place. You feel like you're out in the wild.

'The best conditions for me are when there's a bit of mist to make it atmospheric, especially when it's sunny or with a bit of cloud.

'I like the drama of the beams of light shining through.

First rabbit of spring

Lone stag at sunset

Resting damselfly

Lone goose at dawn

Geece fly over a still lake

Stags at dawn

'I'm a bit different from other photographers in that I don't have the huge amounts of patience. I like to get on my bike and cycle round, just seeing what I can find.

'If nothing's happening in one area, I'll cycle off somewhere else and see what I can see. It's all about perseverance really.

'Even on the best days, you only get perhaps an hour and a half of the maximum conditions so you have to make the most of it.

'That's the exciting part of it - you never know what you're going to see next.'

Swan after dark

Stags rutting in the autumn

Stags rutting

Stags rutting

Autumn squirrel

Dewy spiders web at dawn

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Simple Animation to Explain Engineering Principles

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Aircraft Radial Engine

2. Oval Regulation

3. Sewing Machines

4. Malta Cross Movement - Second Hand Movement used to Control the Clock

5. Auto Change File Mechanism

6. Auto Constant Velocity Universal Joint

7. Gun Ammunition Loading System

8. Rotary Engine - An Internal Combustion Engine (the heat rather than the piston movement into rotary movement)

9. Inline Engine - (cylinders lined up side by side)

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Photos of Space from NASA

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Did you know some interesting facts

1 MOPED is the short term for 'Motorized Pedaling'.

2. POP MUSIC is 'Popular Music' shortened.

3. BUS is the short term for 'Omnibus' that means everybody.

4. FORTNIGHT comes from 'Fourteen Nights' (Two Weeks).

5. DRAWING ROOM was actually a 'withdrawing room' where people withdrew after Dinner. Later the prefix 'with' was dropped..

6. NEWS refers to information from Four directions N, E, W and S..

7. AG-MARK, which some products bear, stems from 'Agricultural Marketing'.

8. JOURNAL is a diary that tells about 'Journey for a day' during each Day's business.

9. QUEUE comes from 'Queen's Quest'. Long back a long row of people as waiting to see the Queen. Someone made the comment Queen's Quest..

10. TIPS come from 'To Insure Prompt Service'. In olden days to get Prompt service from servants in an inn, travelers used to drop coins in a Box on which was written 'To Insure Prompt Service'. This gave rise to the custom of Tips.

11. JEEP is a vehicle with unique Gear system. It was invented during World War II (1939-1945). It was named 'General Purpose Vehicle (GP)'.GP was changed into JEEP later.

12. Coca-Cola was originally green.

13. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

14. The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.

15. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

16. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row ! of the keyboard.

17. Women blink nearly twice as much as men!!

18. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

19. It is impossible to lick your elbow.

20.. People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze, your heart stops for a millisecond.

21. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

22. The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.

23. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history.

   o Spades - King David

   o Clubs - Alexander the Great,
   o Hearts – Charlemagne
   o Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

24. Horse Statue in a Park…
• If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle.
• If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle
• If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

25. What do bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers all have in common? Ans. - All invented by women.

26. A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

27. A snail can sleep for three years.

28. All polar bears are left handed.

29. Butterflies taste with their feet.

30. Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

31. In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

32. On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

33. Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.

34. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

35. The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

36. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

37. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

38. Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over million descendants.

39. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.

40. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

41. Most lipstick contains fish scales.

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How Famous Companies were Named

It's amazing how these famous companies were christened!! !

Yahoo!

The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

Xerox

The Greek root "xer" means dry. The inventor, Chestor Carlson , named his product Xerox as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying.

Sun Microsystems

Founded by four Stanford University buddies, Sun is the acronym for Stanford University Network

Sony


From the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SAP

"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by four ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Application s/Projects' group of IBM.

Red Hat.

Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!

Oracle


Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such).

Motorola

Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.

Microsoft

It was coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.

Lotus

Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from the lotus position or 'padmasana.' Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Intel


Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ' Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Hewlett-Packard

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

Hotmail

Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing email via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casings.

Google

The name started as a jockey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google

Cisco

The name is not an acronym but an abbreviation of San Francisco . The company's logo reflects its San Francisco name heritage.. It represents a stylized Golden Gate Bridge .

Apple Computers

Favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.

Apache

It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server - thus, the name Apache.

Adobe

The name came from the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock .

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Three Good Stories

The Turtles

A turtle family decided to go on a picnic. The turtles, being naturally slow about things, took seven years to prepare for their outing. Finally the turtle family left home looking for a suitable place. During the second year of their journey they found a place
ideal for them at last!

For about six months they cleaned the area, unpacked the picnic basket, and completed the arrangements. Then they discovered they had forgotten the salt. A picnic without salt would be a disaster, they all agreed. After a lengthy discussion, the youngest turtle was chosen to retrieve the salt from home. Although he was the fastest of the slow moving turtles, the little turtle whined, cried, and wobbled in his shell. He agreed to go on one condition: that no one would eat until he returned. The family consented and the little turtle left.

Three years passed and the little turtle had not returned. Five years...six years... then on the seventh year of his absence, the oldest turtle could no longer contain his hunger. He announced that he was going to eat and begun to unwrap a sandwich. At that
point the little turtle suddenly popped out from behind a tree shouting, 'See! I knew you wouldn't wait. Now I am not going to go get the salt.'

[Some of us waste our time waiting for people to live up to our expectations. We are so concerned about what others are doing that we do not do anything ourselves.]

The Frogs

A farmer came into town and asked the owner of a restaurant if he could use a million frog legs. The restaurant owner was shocked and asked the man where he could get so many frog legs! The farmer replied, 'There is a pond near my house that is full of frogs - millions of them. They all croak all night long and they are about to make me crazy!' So the restaurant owner and the farmer made an
agreement that the farmer would deliver frogs to the restaurant, five hundred at a time for the next several weeks.

The first week, the farmer returned to the restaurant looking rather sheepish, with two scrawny little frogs. The restaurant owner said, 'Well... where are all the frogs?' The farmer said, 'I was mistaken. There were only these two frogs in the pond. But they sure were making a lot of noise!'

[ Next time you hear somebody criticizing or making fun of you, remember, it's probably just a couple of noisy frogs. Also remember that problems always seem bigger in the dark. Have you ever laid in your bed at night worrying about things which seem almost overwhelming like a million frogs croaking? Chances are pretty good that when the morning comes, and you take a closer look, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about.]

The Pretty Lady

Once upon a time a big monk and a little monk were traveling together. They came to the bank of a river and found the bridge was damaged. They had to wade across the river. There was a pretty lady who was stuck at the damaged bridge and couldn't cross the river.

The big monk offered to carry her across the river on his back. The lady accepted. The little monk was shocked by the move of the big monk. 'How can big brother carry a lady when we are supposed to avoid all intimacy with females?' thought the little monk. But he kept quiet... The big monk carried the lady across the river and the small monk followed unhappily. When they crossed the river, the big
monk let the lady down and they parted ways with her. All along the way for several miles, the little monk was very unhappy with the act of the big monk. He was making up all kinds of accusations about big monk in his head. This got him madder and madder. But he still kept quiet. And the big monk had no inclination to explain his situation.

Finally, at a rest point many hours later, the little monk could not stand it any further, he burst out angrily at the big monk. 'How can you claim yourself a devout monk, when you seize the first opportunity to touch a female, especially when she is very pretty? All your teachings to me make you a big hypocrite The big monk looked surprised and said, 'I had put down the pretty lady at the river bank many hours ago, how come you are still carrying her along?'

[This very old Chinese Zen story reflects the thinking of many people today. We encounter many unpleasant things in our life, they irritate us and they make us angry. Sometimes, they cause us a lot of hurt, sometimes they cause us to be bitter or jealous .. But like the little monk, we are not willing to let them go away.We keep on carrying the baggage of the 'pretty lady' with us. We let them keep on coming back to hurt us, make us angry, make us bitter and cause us a lot of agony. Why? Simply because we are not willing to put down or let go of the baggage of the 'pretty lady'. We should let go of the pretty lady immediately after crossing the river. This will immediately remove all our agonies. There is no need to be further hurt by the unpleasant event after it is over.]

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