Early each day to the steps of St. Paul’s
The little old bird woman comes
In her own special way to the people she calls
Come, buy my bags full of crumbs

Come feed the little birds, show them you care
And you’ll be glad if you do
Their young ones are hungry
Their nests are so bare
All it takes is tuppence from you

Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag
Feed the birds, that’s what she cries
While overhead, her birds fill the skies

All around the cathedral the saints and apostles
Look down as she sells her wares
Although you can’t see it, you know they are smiling
Each time someone shows that he cares

Though her words are simple and few
Listen, listen, she’s calling to you
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag

– Feed The Birds Lyrics [Mary Poppins]

When I was growing up, Mary Poppins was one of my favourite musical movies and so whenever I see people feeding birds, this song will come to mind.

The first time I met a bird man in person, I was enjoying the sea breeze on the Santa Monica Pier. It was the first time I was travelling solo. I took my first DSLR camera out for a spin on my solo tour of USA and I snapped anything and everything that caught my eye. On my 1 month tour of USA, I took a total of over 4000 photographs. See, this is what digital does to you. It’s so easy to just snap, snap, snap away that you will take over thousands of photographs. That said, it did help me get these awesome shots of the Santa Monica bird man feeding some very excited and happy seagulls.

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Recently, in Paris, I was once again enthralled by a bird man stationed in front of the Notre Dame. It was fascinating to watch him. He didn’t ask for any money. He just shared his breadstick with any tourist who wanted to feed the birds. If my friend and I weren’t on a tight schedule, I would be content to sit there watching him feed the birds. In fact, I might have tried my hand at feeding the birds myself.

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On a side note, I really love sparrows. I think they’re very brave birds. Why? Well, you can read about it here.

Now seeing as the Mary Poppins song talked about the little old bird woman at the steps of St Paul, I was excited to see if I can spot said bird woman there. Well, let’s just say I was disappointed. I guess it’s really just is a song. Or maybe the bird woman was taking a day off. It was a Sunday after all.

While there weren’t any women feeding birds at St Paul’s, I did see a man feeding birds at St James Park. He wanted to get a picture with the pigeon you see.

I should put it on my bucket list eh? Feed the birds at St Paul’s! So thanks to Nancy Merrill’s A Photo A Week Challenge this week, I’ve got one more thing to do on my travel bucket list.