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| Jackdaw: No I'm not going to look at you |
The rain is thick cloud, which obscures the hills and any hope of horizon. There is merely greyness, misty, and the nearby trees wave their skeletal branches. (But there are some buds appearing on the ends of some branches.) Still, the wind gusts and makes little puffy protests outside the windows. Or sometimes more of a low growl.
The rooks are on the move, and their occasional cries when I was up in the woods made me look up. Is something afoot? That’s what I wondered. A huge pine tree fell over in a recent gale. I’m breaking off some of the smaller branches and twigs from the trunk, and everything is wet and this soon soaks through my gloves. But the twigs and the branches will dry out at home and make good kindling for fires, and the smell of woodsmoke will remind me of France and there are the contours of different lands and different places in my mind only it is not even perhaps my mind, but places that I, and I’m so thankful for that, that I can have access to. As if there is an equivalent mind place or consciousness place to land, to terrain. Once visited, it becomes accessible to you. Who then would not want to visit everywhere in the world, to have such endless, varied, wondrous access? Landscapes are so exciting, for me. Such paths to travel on.
Lots of birds I can see from my window, some of them rooks but I can’t make out the other ones, they are all black specks against pale grey enveloping sky. So, when I saw the rain and the wind and the grey sky lowered right down onto the land this morning I thought this could be the one day when I don’t go outside. But I soon changed my mind. And thought, on the contrary I really want to go out. Not far, but out. So I had to put on layers of clothing and the outermost layer is waterproof, and I’m not cold, I enjoy the path behind the houses, which joins the little stream near the road and the stream has hastened so much it has joined the path so it’s all mud on the last few metres.
Onto the road, and the field on the other side of the road is flooded. Usually with heavy rain, a little pond appears. And along with the newly-arrived pond, there are always some newly-arrived ducks. Where do the ducks come from? And, I often think, once the pond disappears again, where do the ducks go to? It is possible they come from the actual river, which flows just a few metres away from the field, on the other side of the railway, which is the field’s boundary. I expect that’s where they come from and go to. I just haven’t seen any of them fly from one location to the other. By the river, which is peaceful these days in that area, since the road was diverted, there’s also a pair of herons, and in the spring and summer, oyster catchers.
Today, because of the excessive rain, there are 2 ponds in the field, joined by a narrow canal of water. Is it the novelty that draws the ducks? A change of scenery? A chance to get away from the rest of the group? There was also a solitary rook, pacing about at the edge of the new pond. Is it watching, is it predatory, is it simply engaged with the new activity? So many questions that none of the birds seem to want to answer. Back in my garden, the finches and sparrows, the starlings, the robin the blackbirds, are much more vocal and interested in talking to me.
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| Oh, OK |
Ducks are a common sight along the banks of the river Tweed where I often walk. They slip in and out of the riverbank overhangs. I feel they are safe there. But there is nowhere to hide in these new ponds, however briefly they come into being. Perhaps they are more like a holiday resort for the ducks, not somewhere they take up permanent residence. What does permanence mean to a duck I wonder. I know what it means to rooks. They come back every evening to roost with their gang, in their favourite trees. Pine are particularly popular with the local rooks.
And I have just looked up rooks online and note that they like to paddle about looking for all kinds of interesting things to eat, so that would explain their curiosity while investigating a new pond or two which have appeared in the field. The ducks float about or rather swim about, and the rooks stomp on the margins looking for small edibles.
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| Jackdaws on a sunny day |
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