Wagtails and Starlings

Two Territorial Wagtails

Steam from frosty fence

Rises, as tempers flare hot

Wagtails flip the bird

Starlings at Dusk

Starlings spread a quilt

Of sunset gold, pink and blue
Murmuring the moon

The Chattering Hedge

All cosy, couched in

Hawthorn and elderberries
Sparrows nattering

Magpies

Four magpies, fighting
Tag teams of feathered fury
Tumble in the trees

Blackbirds and a Red Kite

The Blackbird

The hedge brambling bird

Quietly picks a path through

Tangled branch and fruit

On finding a blackbird, unexpectedly

Bright eye catches mine

Yellow-bladed beak and claw

Daggers drawn, retreat!

Red Kite

Caught in the willows 

A call hollows out the wind

Crying solitude

Jackdaws

The Cherry Picker

Silver hooded stealth

Picks fruit just ripening red

Enough to eat, shoo!

Glastonbury Abbey

Above the old ruins

Rising in a slow spiral

Jackdaws dance at dusk

Jackdaws

Soft silvery hoods

Drawn high over hunched shoulders
Jackdaws call matins

Swifts and Sparrows

Swifts overhead

A glint of metal

Catches my eye, high in sky

Palette knife paints blue

Sparrow Lane

Street theatre in tree

Leaves shake with laughter, cheep! cheep!

Sparrows tell rude jokes

Herons, Swans and the Somerset Levels

Herons

Waterway clearing

Wading the reedy rhyne mud

Herons pace tractor

Clearing ditch and drain

Dredged up silt slicks and weed sedge

Herons yaw for fish

Swans on the Marshes

Swans on the green sward
As tho' a'sail upon land

Strange sails gathering

Cheddar

Grebes and moorhens dance

Dallying on the bright lake

Look! Reservoir bobs...

Heron

On the roof, long legg'd

A strange feathered weather vane
Cranes round: points to ponds

Sixteen seagulls

Sixteen svelte seagulls

Lawn dancing. A fine supper

In feather ball gowns

Sixteen shrill seagulls

Squabbling over spilt chips

Take-away tourists