Bird brain

I lifted my head when a bird song which had been going round my head suddenly made itself heard. Flipping back my fringe - it is getting too long, I listened again. I was on all fours laying a pathway through the dahlia bed - as you do....

I'd been so engrossed with my fingers in the soil, placing slabs in a winding path when I heard, but not listened to the twittering.

With my  neck twisted up, craning it to see if I could track who was singing in the bare sycamore trees behind the glasshouse. I knew the song - the churr and chirrup belonged to one of my favourite birds. The Long Tailed Tit - the 'flying teaspoon'. My eyes flitted across the branches and suddenly I caught their movement. A family cluster of may be eight or ten birds tripping through the twigs hunting for insects.

Like a cat I watched their every move until they came to the edge of the trees and swooped off in a twittery churring wave - gone.

Back to work.

Oh, and the painting I did the other day? Another of my favourites - the Curlew.

Observations

Most of the droplets glisten when they capture the meagre early morning sunlight, others appear opaque. The window pane is littered with static rain beads giving the appearance of pockmarked glass. Then when the fast moving grey clouds curtain the sun, the droplets become almost invisible allowing my eye through the distraction. I now watch the trees in the garden are dancing in the brisk breeze, it fluctuates from a gentle flip of the lighter branches to whole tree contortions. 

We have a stained glass plaque in the window and at the moment, brief flashes of sun sing through the colours scattering speckles of colour on the glass.

Himself left for work while it was still the last drifts of darkness leaving the cat and me in bed, his parting shot - I'd stay there if I were you. So we have. Although I suspect I will be up long before the cat.

The hyacinths in the lounge have both decorated the room and the air with their delicious scent and blue flowers however they are beginning to fade and I am sorry to see them go. It will be another ten months before we have them up on the mantel and in the window again.  Primula have been brought in to fill that hole.

The cat is rhythmically snoring beneath Himself's aged lumberjack shirt - one reserved specifically for gardening and tucking around a cold sleeping cat.

I can see, but not hear, the wind chime in the garden twirling around in the wind. It is an elegant spiral of tubes which normally share a gentle chime as they tink against each other. Today I suspect it is more of an angry clash than a melodic background sound. The blackbirds do not seem to care. They are busily foraging around the plants and bird feeder breaking off only to chase each other around and across the garage roof.

I plan to paint once I have posted this. I  can feel the compulsion to sketch and run a watercolour filled brush across paper. It sometimes feels like a rising tide which I used to suppress - somehow 'adulting' seemed more important - but now I heed that urge.

Life is for living.

If Winter comes Can Spring be far behind? (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Stepping in to the garden this morning was like stepping into an energy field. The air was crisp with the lightest of airy blue skies and I was surrounded by the sounds of blackbirds quarrelling, robins singing and the neighbour's hens making happy hen noises.

Leaves and twigs were brushed with the lightest of frost and in the sunlight they sparkled and twinkled catching my eye, filling me with joy. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly my spirit is lifted by days like these.

Whilst I was out, I fed the birds and cracked the glassy lid of ice on all their watering holes. I knew I was being watched as the trees rustled with blackbirds leaning forward to see what I'd left for them.

The cat has remained in bed - as is her want - she is a a bit of an 'old dear' and likes her creature comforts and usually I want to do the same, but not today. 

Today is too beautiful to miss.

A thorny issue

The garden was quiet again this morning once the storm had passed. There was a certain stillness - almost a sigh of relief - a moment's breath. The birds were flitting back and forth, making up for lost time I suspect. Today we'd planned to do the Big Garden Bird Watch ,  something we've tried to do annually for quite a while now. However, instead of sitting down in the summerhouse, notebook and mug of tea to hand, we were having to wrestle a 20 year old climbing rose who'd succumbed to Éowyn's howling winds and was now lying prone across the back of the garden in a very sorry state.

Himself and I armed with not mugs of tea or binoculars but with loppers, secateurs and the shredder got to work soon after breakfast. Metres and metres of heavily thorned and tangled rose branches were first lopped then shredded into piles of chippings. As we worked, the woodshed began to reappear from behind the unforgiving tangle.

To be brutally honest, I was not sorry the rose had to be reduced to a pile of wood chip. It had grown so big that the flowers - as beautiful and as scented as they were - were beyond our reach. We estimated it had grown over 12 metres (40 foot in old money) and was truly a monster. Now, hopefully it will recover and flower again in a year or two but at head height.

Did we still manage to see a bird or two? Well, surprisingly so - yes, many. They were so busy being birds that our shenanigans with the rose did not seem to bother them. 

Gentle Sunday nothings

A small downy white feather was lightly drifting on our pond. The slightest of breeze gently twisting it around - a little swan in it's own little lake. 

Although still, meteorologically speaking, late winter today felt a bit like spring. When the weather is quiet, with a muted air about her, Spring has a certain stillness that feels clear and fresh.   

With a sense of anticipation. 

Snowdrop and daffodil leaves have pushed through the decaying leaves left by autumn promising much - just not yet.....I will have to wait a little longer.

The birds have been singing their little hearts out - Robins, Coal, Great and Blue Tits, Blackbirds, House Sparrows and both the Gold and Bullfinches. They are also celebrating that the seasons are turning and each day further from the solstice is a day nearer spring.

In the greenhouse I'd left an untidy mess from an end of year pruning of the vine which - to my shame - I never cleared up. However just by a lucky turn of events, I am now to teach a Spring Wreath workshop and the once discarded vines are now twisty hedgerow wreaths ready to fully dry and then be decorated with hand made nests with faux eggs, moss, feathers and ivy.

karma

It is early morning, the snow has all but gone, replaced by a gentle dull drizzle and drifting grey coloured mist. The brightness and clarity of the last few days has dissolved into the more usual leaden hues of a northern winter.  Everything is coated in a fine mizzle with jewel like droplets at the end of each branch. And it feels cold.

There is a whirling flash of wings flying back and forth past the bedroom window. 

The starlings are back. 

Our neighbour's bathroom roof has a conveniently starling size gap beneath the slate tiles and the millstone grit stones. It used to be inhabited by a garrulous family of house sparrows until the starlings in a rather nasty take over bid killed all the fledgelings and hounded the adults. It took nearly nine years before the sparrows returned to our garden.....

I digress. The present incumbents - the starlings, have raised between two and three broods every year for over a decade now and seeing that in the wild, starlings live between three and five years, it does mean several generations have passed beneath those slate slabs.

After the flurry of raising fledglings until the last minutes of summer, the starlings suddenly vanish, turning from parents to small dots within those magical murmurations. Then, as autumn begins to soften then decay, they return. They (are 'they' the same birds from summer? without ring ID - who knows?) return and begin prospecting, researching nest sites for the coming spring. 

Winter comes and goes, or lingers depending on her mood however the starlings have a fixed schedule and for the last three or four days the birds have been flitting in and out, squeezing below the snow melt to investigate their potential nesting spot for 2025.

The roof space above the neighbour's bathroom must be filled to the rafters with decades of nesting material. The previous owner, an older lady who although she owned the house for around ten years only really lived in it for about four as she suffered ill health. She was quite happy that the birds lived in her roof saying she was more their landlord that the owner resident herself. There are now new owners, a young couple who have been rebuilding the entire house for the last 18 (very long and dusty and noisy) months who I made aware of 'our' starlings in their roof and until today I thought the birds would be safe for another season. 

Today I heard work starting in the bathroom. I might gently remind them about the birds in the roof or suggest to the starlings that their residency, like the house sparrows they evicted, has now too come to an end.

           

Surround Sounds

  A personal challenge - try and write something every day for January 2025 

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I have a busy brain. It chats happily to itself and to me, organising, discussing, replaying, planning, making lists and anything else that it fancies to annoy me with. For a few years now, I have been gently practising the art of silencing the incessant chatter.

Some days it works and others - not so much. I have learnt and regularly practise ... to just listen. Listening to the sounds around and not letting my busy brain discuss them. Listening in silence.

The tearing of the wind as it rustles through trees.

The crackle and bursting of air bubbles when a river tumbles over the rocks.

Birds singing for territory, for mates, to impress.

The sound of boots slurping in mud, crunching on frosted snow, clipping on tarred pavements, scrunching on pebbly tracks.

The drag and whush of the retreating tide on a rocky beach.

The crisp sound as a page is turned in a new book.

The clink of a paint brush as you swirl it in water to clean it.

The quiet breathing and sometimes the deep snoring of a fast asleep cat.

That deep chest thudding roar of rain swollen rivers as they crash down a ravine.

......and just a gentle enquiry - how many of you heard the sound as you read the words?

Before winter really arrives

A personal challenge - try and write something every day for January 2025 

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There is a crunchy crispy note to our footsteps as we walk up the side of Dewbarrow Ridge.  Puddles are lidded with a layer of ice and the air although cold, feels and smells earthy and fresh.  It is really good to be out. Snow and icy conditions have been forecast to start this evening - winter is on her way - so we are out on the hills making the most of the lull before the storm.

Although there were several cars stashed here and there along the lane, it appears we are the only ones up in the woods. 

Some walks, I come home tired but happy, others I need to recover before I can appreciate them, but today's.... today's five miles have left me feeling elated!

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Birds either spotted or heard:

Buzzard, Rooks, Nuthatch, Yaffel (Green Woodpecker), Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Crows and the most beautiful of Barn Owls.

'Keewik keewik'

A personal challenge - try and write something every day for January 2025 

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Carrying a small tub laden with toast crumbs, dried sultanas, cold bacon fat and cake, as well as a full kettle of not quite boiled water, I carefully picked my way through the garden to the bird feeder. The Robin was giving running commentary and a cluster of Blackbirds were loitering by the pond watching me with bead bright eyes. 

The bird snacks were emptied into two trays and the water used to help dissolve the thin layer of ice in the water bowls in the garden. 

The sky was the thinnest of clear blue with ragged white contraflow criss-crossing the expanse. In the distance a barrage of shooting - a 'side effect' of living in a village on the edge of privately owned moorland......

Suddenly the female Tawny Owl whistled a plaintive 'keewik keewik' triggering the garden birds to send up warning calls and flutter nervously through the trees. 

I retreated back to the house, more layers needed as my fingers and feet felt lumpen and cold. I returned with my camera and snapped a few photos of frost covered leaves with daggers of ice acting as temporary armour.

Vinca leaves encrusted with sharp stilettos of ice

I recorded the garden birds - Robin, Blackbirds (male and female), Dunnock, Jackdaw, Mistle Thrush, House Sparrow, Great and Coal Tit who were all still grumbling defensively about the now silent Tawny Owl.

a watercolour of a hen Blackbird from my #perpetualjournal - 

ignore the dates, I wrote them incorrectly, I have since amended them.