Big Garden Birdwatch 2025

I counted you up

Each vital wing a prayer:

Nature’s abundance

Goldfinch and Buzzard

Seventeen goldfinch
In the magnolia tree
Fresh buds, bright faces

Before Storm Eowyn

Jackdaw alarm calls!
Above me; silent brown wings
Buzzard, storm bringer

January 2025

Starlings


7.45 am
Iron clouds roll, I spot them!
A fleet of starlings

Stretched as thin as air
Starling flock returns to floods
From yesterday's rain

Heron and Little Egret flying past on walk

Overhead; look up!
Awkward neck crick, gangly legs
Birds and birdwatchers

Magpies, Crows and Jackdaws

Magpies in a tree
Six or seven, more maybe
Secret to be told

He feeds them. Walking
The lanes, Tor bound, beautiful
World waking up. Here

Garden Birds

In the willow twigs
Sweet garden song of robin
For the New Year now

All manner of small:
Long-tails, Chatter-spats, Dundills
Sparries, Jenny Wren

October Birds

October

Seagulls fly past fields
Like a fishing net dragging
Autumn tides to shore

Starlings arriving
In little drifts; falling leaves
Autumn flurries fly

Weymouth

Walking Weymouth beach
He feeds the beachcombing crows
Who follow his lead

On Westham Bridge, Weymouth

By the bridge waiting
Patience of a saint, stone still
Heron prays for fish

By Beaples Standing Stone

Rook rubs the sky clean
A feather duster dancing
Around the old stone

House Martins in September

Sycamore seeds spin
While House martins circle tree
Spirals everywhere

 

Swallow and swift gone
House martin hesitates; a
Late summer harvest

A week of sunshine
And the House Martin’s picnic
Fills the country sky

July Birds

 

Five bluetits flit past
Green as apples on the branch
Old orchard; new life

 

The buzzard circles
Finding a thermal. Freed from
Our mortal scope now

 

Wells

Moorhen mother sits
Surrounded by Saint’s waters
Patient protectress

This Year's Birdbox Nest

This year a pair of House Sparrows chose to raise their noisy chicks in one of our birdboxes, visible from our kitchen window. The most entertaining and enchanting family to observe and the silence, now they have fledged, is palpable. We think there were at least two chicks but we missed them fledging so there could well have been more. 

The Sparrow Box

Sparrow parents spin
Frantic food dash, fly, fly, bug
Woodlouse for lunch, yuk!

Godzilla and Bro
That’s what I nicknamed the pair
Roaring for food now

Empty Nester

A quiet kitchen
You have fledged, nest-box now cold
Little sparrows flown

Swifts over the Garden

Two swifts, sickle-sharp
Are honed on a whetstone sun
High in a June sky

On a Sunday walk and early this morning.

Stubble-field ballet
Swallows swoop and weave round bales
Bravo! More! Encore!

Egret overhead!
White yacht on a blue sky tide
Fair winds for flying

Fifteen Little Egret in a Field

Little Egret Troupe

Feats of Flying! Fan Dancing

and Fierce Spear Fishing

 
Wading through silver
While house martins wheel above
Mirrored in the field

 

Goldfinches in the Willows

 

Verge-side willows slump
While two goldfinch strip catkins
Of their down; spring snow!

 

Clouds of catkin down
Drift in the warm Spring sunshine
Goldfinch weather now

Spring fields and garden birds

A twister springs up
Swirling wings in a grey sky
Seagulls storm the field

The farmer’s field lake
Grown fat with winter flooding
Now ducks feed for free

Through the window, here!
Robin acknowledges me
For windowsill seeds

Little wren hunts flies
While the blackthorn’s in full bloom
We share the blossom

Starlings and Garden Birds

 

Draped across the line
Pegged out like laundry drying
A starling blanket

Last light! Not home yet
Starlings stream past my window
Super-highway skies

Garden Birds

On the bird feeder
Robin, sparrow and bluetit
Playing seed roulette

Pembrokeshire Birds, September 2023

Kingfisher

Perched on a bare bough
Cloth of gold and blue; bright flag
Above the river

 

Little Egrets and Canada Geese

We are gathering
Where the river and fields wend
A way to feed us

Two waiters in white
Among the gaggle of guests
Riverbank dining

 

Red Kites

Red wings, white tails, wind
Almost gone, now returned here
To hunt the blue hills

 

Robin near St Davids Cathedral

Cheese sarnie and tea
Spare a crumb! Table hopping
And hoping for alms

 

Crow

Sizing me up, you
Decide my cake is crow food
Beachside corvid hops

 

Sparrows

A handful of crumbs
For a handful of small birds
Happiness is here

A Bright Balance of Feathers: Paperback Edition

 

My author copies have arrived! It’s always exciting to open a parcel and find a new book. I’m so pleased to have released this new edition of ‘A Bright Balance of Feathers’ in paperback form. It has a matt cover featuring one of my photos of a robin taken at Ham Wall Nature Reserve on the Somerset Levels and it’s light enough to take on a walk with enough space around the poems for you to write your own nature haiku and notes.

Find it for sale here on Amazon: A Bright Balance of Feathers: Bird Haiku: Amazon.co.uk: Herlihy, P L: 9798386790400: Books

 

Buzzards in a Valley on Dartmoor

 

It hunts the tree line
Below me, a wingspan away
Hunter seeks its prey

 

Brown feathers reach out
Ruffling in the air. Eyes down!
Birdseye view below

 

You follow the wind
Catching it close in your heart
Soaring with its song

Blackcap and the pirate rooks

These two haiku are from one walk around the local area:

Blackcap

 In the hedgerow hops
Among thorned berries, blackcap
Autumn hat adorned

The Pirate Rooks

Above the grey stone
Roof they fly; flock of black wings
And pirate bones. Arrrrh!

Autumn Rooks, Long-tailed Tits and a White Swan

 

Rooks in a red field

Shaved of its corn. Forage! Fight!

Beaks glean Autumn light

 

Late evening calls, hark!

The long-tailed tits sing and flit

In warm company

 

White swan in the rhyne

Wings against a white skyline

Singing the old songs

Barn Swallows near Glastonbury Tor

A sight for sore eyes

No wing more uplifting than

Summer’s first swallow

Crow Tree Picnic

 

In a circle, eyes

Watching our every mouthful

Crows, crumbs, closer, caw…

 

Hoodwinked and wary

The Family gathers

Extorting their dues

Crows, The Nothe, Weymouth