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

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

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

Along the A303

Wiltshire Field 

The partridges search 

(Though no pear tree is nearby) 

For fruits of the field 

 

At Stonehenge 

Ancient autumn fields 

In gold mist reveal Hern’s deer 

While the rooks count rocks

Buzzard. Shoulders hunched
Hands in pockets; loitering
Mist curfews mischief

Cutting through the chaff
With tail cane. The pheasants chat
Pleasantries and that

On finding the remains of a starling in the garden

 

Cold on paving slab
A corpse of feathers & bones
Falcon’s dinner plate

 

I will draw you, now
Since you were drawn out by death
A sketch with no song

A Bright Balance of Feathers

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