Ebb & Flow

Balloons, Balls, Bottles, and Bric à Brac
Since my gallery of random surprising, or not so surprising, objects carried along Lambeth Reach by the Thames last year, here are a few more. Some colourful, some amusing, some annoying, and some thought-provoking. At the end, there are suggestions as to how to help tackle the ever-present litter problem along the river.

Balloons

Many parties take place along, or on the river, so that it’s hardly surprising that balloons are liable to end up there. However, pretty as they are compared to some of the litter floating by, they still present a hazard to birds and other wildlife with their fabric, strings, and ribbons. And though some balloons are now on the market as biodegradable, the most commonly used balloons can take anywhere from six months to several years to break down, in the meantime presenting a particular danger to seabirds ingesting them as food.

A *love* balloon? The message was illegible.

Balls
Balls of all kinds and colours end up in the river too. Some bouncing along energetically, others sagging deflated…

Bottles
Bottles and cans could so easily be recycled but either by carelessness or design they end up in the river.

Bric à Brac…
…A loose definition to describe some of the oddities I’ve seen floating by.

Endings
Some floating plants are naturally biodegradable, but others, such as natural Christmas trees, are more challenging and now that it’s possible to recycle them in many London boroughs, that’s what should happen.

Autumn leaves

Covid Carnations
Among the endings that made a powerful impression on me was the release, on March 9 this year, of thousands of red carnations into the River Thames representing the hundreds of thousands of lives lost to Covid.

Perhaps the most poignant “ending” of all was this single carnation swept back upstream by a tide a day after the March 9 Covid Day of Reflection, marking the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of Covid in the UK. After a firehose salute by London Fire Brigade vessel TANNER in front of the crowds lining Albert Embankment, thousands of red carnations were let fall into the river from Lambeth Bridge. Carried downstream by the ebbing tide, a few returned on later flood tides, as they were slowly absorbed into their watery environment.

Sources, further information, and how you can help:
Port of London Authority: Litter picking along the Thames and the PLA Driftwood Service
Port of London Authority: From 1-30 September 2025 Clean Thames Challenge
See Putney Tidy Towpath Group
Thames 21, see: Join a River Clean and River clean-ups
RSPCA ‘Balloon Releases threaten Wildlife’
Sussex Wildlife Trust: ‘Against the release of balloons.’

Eric Fitch Daglish writes in Birds of the British Isles that when comparing the flight of mammals and birds “bats have mastered the air within limits but […] no bats are capable of the long, swift sustained flights daily carried out by swifts and albatross.”

Always fascinated by the freedom of birds in flight, their agility, grace, and manoeuvrability, and their use of wings to impress or warn off, here are a few of the pictures I’ve taken in and around Victoria Tower Gardens by the River Thames in London.

This fascination with the agility of birds in the air and how eventually it led to designs of vehicles for human flight, is explored in an article on Aviation Inspired by Birds. The writer explains how Otto Lilienthal undertook meticulous research on birds and airfoils: “His glider designs, inspired by bird wings, paved the way for modern aviation pioneers.”
He goes on to say how the “diversity of wing shapes, each adapted for specific flight styles has served as the basis for different aircraft designs.” And here below, you can perhaps see some of the differences in the wing shapes and arrangement of feathers between the birds I have photographed. However, for professional images, comparisons and text by an expert, click here.

There are sayings and superstitions attached to some birds. Cormorants, for example, are regarded as a good sign in the Norwegian tradition, which says that they are the returning spirits of those lost at sea. Further on, I mention another superstition on the same lines: that seagulls carry the souls of sailors drowned at sea.

Though, of course I have not seen one, and very unlikely to see one along the River Thames, there is the famous tradition – evoked in Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – that to kill an albatross is very unlucky. However, seeing one, or protecting one, is regarded as a sign of good luck.

There is a plethora of superstition surrounding all kinds of birds but in this article I’ve kept to sayings specially associated with water birds.

As well as superstitions concerning cormorants there are also beliefs around sea gulls. Michael Trigg writes: “that gulls have long had a place in seagoing folklore and legends. Ocean sailors have seen the gull as a harbinger of good news, probably because on a long voyage, the sighting of a gull at sea meant land was close.”

Marlin Bree writes: “Old sailors believe that gulls are special — one should never harm a gull. Some even believed that the souls of their departed shipmates were reincarnated as gulls.”

Marlin Bree, who has studied gulls in passing over many years, admires the way, “they are able to shape and reshape their wing angles and even individual feathers for the best aerodynamic effect. They hover, soar the thermals, and then suddenly fold their wings, dive into the water, and instantly become fully aquatic. When they bob up again, they become airborne with just a few powerful flaps of their wings.” If you spend any time by the river, you will see exactly that.

Along with many others, I find watching birds a brief escape from the pressures of the world around us. If the tide is out, the shells and smaller creatures on theVictoria Tower Gardens foreshore are harvested by pigeons, black-backed and herring gulls, and crows. Pigeons, easily alarmed will take to the air together, swirl around and return. Gulls squawk and squabble: juveniles bother their parents for food; older gulls drop shells on hard surfaces below to crack them open; and others dart and dive across the water catching insects. But down by the water’s edge, it seems that crows usually rule, and these intelligent birds often fly up to crack open their booty on the riverside path, leaving empty shells to the puzzlement of some. Occasionally a cormorant will rest on the foreshore its wings outstretched, and if you’re lucky you might see one diving into the water and surfacing with a fish…

Sources and further information
BBC article: ‘The aircraft that may fly like a flock of geese’.
BoatUS: American author ‘Marlin Bree talks about how boaters can coexist with seagulls.’
Daglish, Eric Fitch: Birds of the British Isles, 1948
The Otto Lilienthal Museum
Trigg, Michael: Seagulls – Friend and Foe