Swifts over the Garden

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

The Starlings Return

On Pomparles Bridge 

A sunset of starling flocks 

Fills the sky with wings 

Christmas Holiday Haiku 2019/2020

Near Stonehenge

Still as standing stones
Sentinel of the circle
Buzzard on fence post

Near Greylake

Fields; silver flood plain
All awash with wading birds
A lake of Lapwings

Near Glastonbury

A strange shimmer runs
Fractal fields shifting. Weird sight
As starlings settle

Starling Flocks Arriving Overhead One Evening in November

Here, now; a blanket
Of soft wings brushing the sky

Draws evening close by

The absence of sound

Their solidarity speaks

A thousand times loud

Air net. A lattice of

Beak and wing to stop falcons

From feasting on them

In the late lilac

Sky; thin ribbons of birds fly

Above the old thorn

Summer Birds

Young Great Tit

In my hands, frail beat

Of fledged feathers, claw and beak

Fly now, far from me

The dog pauses, wait!

Just long enough for me to

Find a fledgling perch

Hunting Buzzard

Sky-writing above

Longhand. Slow, deliberate

Soliloquy quills

House-martins and Swallows

Weaving through hedgerows

With the evening summer light

Strings of bird bunting

Young Starlings at St. Margaret's Chapel 

From the bell tower

They leap. Hearts and wings clamour

Not falling...gliding!

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