Thursday 17 September
This blog has taken a few twists and turns since I began writing it back in March. As we move into a new season, it is clear to me that the big world affects my little world. At times I have tried to resist it, push the angst and frustration away, thinking I am in control. To a large extent, I have been successful. But the effects have not been obvious.
During lock-down, the frustration was a shared one, fuelled by a sense of helplessness and isolation. After lock-down we were licking our wounds and rebuilding trust in each other and the new behaviours we had to all learn to follow. Most lately, it has been a sense of desperation that has created the unease, and a sense of impending threat that the virus will be back – when rather than if.
But as has been obvious to me in recent posts, the move from summer to autumn has provided the ideal backdrop. The spring and summer enabled nature to sparkle and shine. There was always something new to see and comment on. The clear phases of nature provided new themes; birds and trees, birds and wildflowers, more birds and insects.
Now everything is leaving, dying-back or disappearing. The energy of new growth and new birth has been used up for another year and my small, local world is weary and tired. The bigger world is tired to but angry, resentful and seemingly, looking for someone to blame all the time.
This is shifting my attention to the gloom and fear that my small world is presenting now. The sudden weather changes, the swiftly dropping light levels, the lack of natures happy sights and sounds. Instead, the land and the landscape is offering only broken branches and fallen trees, fields with dried out stubble where just a few weeks ago there were ripening crops.
The Bald Birder 