Thursday 10 December
I have occasionally referred to finding pleasure and satisfaction in the more simple things in life. And taking time to notice what’s happening around me by just looking and listening with just a little bit more care.
Tonight, I took a call from our next door neighbour to inform me that the water level had risen again in her downstairs loo.
“It’s coming up again, Jonathan, sorry.” I explained, as always, that there’s no need to apologise, and that indeed it’s good that she notices. So, I trudged out into the dark with a bright torch and got the waterproof gloves from the greenhouse.
Lifting the manhole cover it was clear that the water was very high and the waste pipe had clearly blocked somewhere along it’s hundred-plus year old route. Shining the torch down, I attached the first two rods to the corkscrew attachment and fed it into the steaming water and into the pipe.
Around a dozen rods later I had reached the blockage and started working at removing it. The first down pipe started to appear in front of me as the water level started to slowly fall. Then, it quickened until it was all gone.
But as I began unscrewing each rod from the next, that’s when I heard them. This was the quietest part of the job and my ears had acclimatised to the outdoors. A different skill is needed to hear clearly outside, the lack of walls means I fell like I need to squint my ears to hear further. It takes a while for eyes to get used to darkness, so why not ears for outdoors?
There must have been about half a dozen Fieldfares chattering away at each other in the apple orchards at the bottom of our garden. It was pitch black as night has set in buy it was only about 6.15pm.
I had listened to a chap talking on the radio this morning about night migrations and how we have learnt recently that so many migrations come in whilst it is nighttime. Birds use the daytime to feed but will often ‘drive at night’. Noc-migs are very common among the thrushes, finches and other songbirds. Not so the larger birds who need daytime thermals to aid their flights. They also don’t feed on the wing like swallows, which needs insects to be up and aboit.
Fieldfares come in their thousands to the UK in the winter, staying till March. And I am sure that’s what I heard this evening after a tired drive home, whilst rodding the blocked drains. A simple pleasure where and when I least expected one. It pays to listen hard and be open to what is occuring in the background.
The Bald Birder 