“And stretch that right leg… hold it…. hold it…. feel those calves working!… and rest.”
A shame the bird’s body is a bit grainy but this was done on a very long zoom. And on a beautiful morning, as you can see. The blog’s third magpie, according to my over-detailed files.
So, there went April 2020, spent entirely under a form of house arrest for reasons that I am finding increasingly hard to understand — ostensibly to protect me from a disease that I may well have already had, but really because having dug ourselves into this hole, we now have no idea how to get back out of it. And I’m not just pointing the finger at the British government here. Six weeks ago everyone panicked, and it’s now, ‘OK, now what?’. A question to which no one seems to have a very plausible answer.
Meanwhile, as we look forward with no joy at all to what is very likely to be an equally dismal May, I have to point my camera out of the window and capture the small part of the world that is permitted me. Hello jackdaw. Enjoy your freedom.
Happily, the sun has come out. Sadly, the people have not. So here is more birdlife: there is little else to bring variety at this time. This jackdaw was determined to get the best vantage point in his immediate area, and seems to have succeeded.
It can’t honestly be said that April 2020 promises much variety. Not as things stand. Forgive me then that this shot repeats the theme of two days ago, but local birdlife is at least photogenic and active at the moment. I marvel at the ability of this tiny creature to happily cling to a fully vertical surface using only its feet: something we humans have yet to master.
Well, he’s feeling happy, at least. Or maybe belligerent, as robins are quite territorial. He may well have a larger territory than many people, at the moment.
This was one of those where I worried about whether the focus would be on the bird or on the foliage. But it worked out alright in the end. As a big fan of The Silence of the Lambs I cannot help but call this starling “Clarice”: love the winter plumage, all the same. Nor would I mess with that beak.
Welcome to 2020. As with 1/1/19, the weather on the first day of this new year was glorious, and may the rest be the same (it won’t happen). I can’t imagine that life as a small bird is easy in the winter but this robin (like others of its species) seems to have humanity sussed: I was digging over part of the garden when he turned up, clearly waiting for me to finish so it could get at the worms with that dagger-like beak and fill its belly before the frosts come (if they ever do).
When we arranged to go to Haworth this lunchtime to celebrate Clare’s birthday (a day late) I did not expect that this would also lead to coming face to face with this very handsome creature. Not to mention several other of his fellow raptors — owls, mainly — in a marquee in the pub beer garden. A photographic opportunity too good to miss. This peregrine falcon is called Geoff, apparently. I wonder how he feels about that.
I go one way, the bird goes its way, the cat goes that. None of us necessarily find out about what the “NO” is so keen to dissuade us.
There is something statuesque about this jackdaw, I think. Like he’s posing and ready to launch a discus like an ancient Greek athlete. Perhaps that is why I have gone monochrome for the day.
