Day 363

Posted byThe Bald BirderPosted inbirds

Thursday 18 March

Started today with another run before work. It does get the day started with an early sense of accomplishment. As I ran down the lane, a male pheasent bestowed in his emerging colourful  regalia ran across my path. Just as, in the opposite direction and directly above the pheasent, a magpie glided across and between the Pollard trees. These trees, lining the full length of the lane, provide wind protection for the apple trees in the orchard.

Have you seen these birds? Magpie and Blackbird – part of a bird-filled morning. The magpie waiting for the opportunity to do something it shouldn’t – why do they look so guilty all of the time? And the blackbird clumsily attempting to cling on to feeder.

Then, on my journey to work, along the long and open lanes to Tiptree I watched winter-worn rooks and crows circling their canopies. Blotches of darkness amongst the branches revealed their nests that have seen through yet another bleak season.

A pair of doves sat next to eachother in the boughs of a tree. The lack of foliage provided little privacy from voyeuristic eyes as they rubbed beaks and shuffled, timidly, closer and closer to one another. Love is in the air. And I realise how much one can see whilst driving the daily commute to work.

This piece of metal work was created by one of our students. It’s the back of a garden trowel but I was drawing to the feathery marks where it was filed smooth.

I have been so caught up with other things lately that I have written nothing of the current pandemic situation. Well, there have been scares about whether the astra-zenica vaccination is safe, some countries have even paused using it. I booked my second A-Z jab for mid-May.

There’s quite a lot of other stuff happening too, but I’m going through a rather prolonged period of news avoidance. Scotland is going through some political angst, and the royal family are facing problems again, and we are preparing ourselves for years of financial belt tightening. And that’s just in the UK.

I have always been interested I current affairs but after the year we have had, I feel done with it all. It’s good, I feel, to take myself offline from it all every now and then. I don’t watch the news or listen to the serious radio stations. But I don’t bury my head, instead I like to think I simply turn my head to look, listen and feel things more pleasing and less acidic. At the moment, of course, the seasons are changing, and that’s far more interesting.

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