Next door's dogs yap and yelp, a noise to disturb if you let it.
But I'm raised high by birdsong. I once witnessed a blackbird in early morning winter darkness singing in the light of a street-lamp, a solo performance better than a hall of Terfels.....this is different.
From everywhere it comes.
I think of Julia Holter's magnificent song 'Surrounded by Horns', where trombones and saxes seem to boom from the rooftops.
Here on the patio ( 'isn't it a lovely day?'....as Gorky's say), there are so many songs I can't distinguish between them.
Intense heat at last and music's blossoming, budding.
My nerve-ends stretch to the tips of oak and willow.
You can catch sight of the singers sometimes ; long-tailed tits, blue and coal tits, nuthatches and dunnocks.
My brother, the expert twitcher, has explained the different calls, but I'm still lost in an avian symphony.
He tells me the nuthatch alone has three distinctive ones and I recognise the long, curved note ( 'take that long curved note and let it float'). It ought to belong to an imposing bird with a gold crest and not this upside-down scrurrier and seeker of bugs beneath the moss-lined bark.
I used to feed them prodigious amounts of crumbs and put up feeders with nuts and seeds that the local gang of squrrels knew all the codes for.
Till the rats.
When the Waun was overgrown and under-grazed they'd come, climbing up the poles and trunk of tree and defying all deterrents.
Rats as big as cats!
I never tried to do a Pied Piper trick with my mouth-harp, it would have been pointless.
So, I stopped the feeding and missed the many birds which came, like the regular shy jays, the finches and most of all the woodpeckers.
I've noticed a decline in sparrows and starlings in the fields nearby and there's been no cuckoo yet; it's late.
Often owls will call in twilight and dark and once, when my youngest was little, she was woken by the screech of a barn owl and was petrified.
The three most extraordinary landings have been :
- a Homer, who spend a few days on our moss-covered garage roof, taking a rest on a long journey
- a tame jackdaw who'd perch on your arm and talk away like he knew 'human'
- a single female pheasant who appeared on the grainy patio and proceeded to peck at the French windows for hours
I used to find dead young birds outside those same windows, after they'd flown straight at them, believing air.
Above the Waun beyond our garden, I often catch sight of circling buzzards and hear their high-pitched mewling.
There's ample prey in the long grass and young birds to capture mid-flight.
At times, a worry of adult crows or jackdaws will bombard the buzzard to protect their young, their frantic cawing piercing.
I've noticed swallows already arriving by the Taff.
Here in summer, when there's a multitude of insects, they sweep and swoop above marsh and moor, signing the sky.
When my two oldest were children, there was a row of thick-knit cypruses between us and our neighbours.
A blackbird family built a nest there and, with the help of a stepladder, my children and their friends would clamber up to view the eggs and then fledglings.
It was constructed dangerously close to ground level and I wasn't surprised when it was abandoned.
I adopted it and used it for creative writing lessons. It was a remarkable structure : moulded in mud and with a woven outer wall which contained all manner of things, from ribbon pieces to blue plastic to string.
Another blackbird - perhaps a younger generation of that same family - would sometimes sing from our fence as my older children practiced their cello and violin.
It was utterly breathtaking!
A human / animal ensemble in celebration of the moment.
And so to the present : the once and always green-emerging reed concertos from bushes and trees.
MONDAY, TWO BLACKBIRDS
Monday, as days are lengthening.
There are two blackbirds singing
in the artificial light
as though it were the sun ;
one in a cafe, dark tattoos
plumed into her arms
as she waits at tables ;
another on the bus behind me
(but I dare not turn )
who needs no stage to perform.
We're taken to the tree-tops
and the rising sun,
voices lifting us lark-like.
High notes resonate in bones
over rattling roads
and gargle of machines.
Monday, as morning listens.
But I'm raised high by birdsong. I once witnessed a blackbird in early morning winter darkness singing in the light of a street-lamp, a solo performance better than a hall of Terfels.....this is different.
From everywhere it comes.
I think of Julia Holter's magnificent song 'Surrounded by Horns', where trombones and saxes seem to boom from the rooftops.
Here on the patio ( 'isn't it a lovely day?'....as Gorky's say), there are so many songs I can't distinguish between them.
Intense heat at last and music's blossoming, budding.
My nerve-ends stretch to the tips of oak and willow.
You can catch sight of the singers sometimes ; long-tailed tits, blue and coal tits, nuthatches and dunnocks.
My brother, the expert twitcher, has explained the different calls, but I'm still lost in an avian symphony.
He tells me the nuthatch alone has three distinctive ones and I recognise the long, curved note ( 'take that long curved note and let it float'). It ought to belong to an imposing bird with a gold crest and not this upside-down scrurrier and seeker of bugs beneath the moss-lined bark.
I used to feed them prodigious amounts of crumbs and put up feeders with nuts and seeds that the local gang of squrrels knew all the codes for.
Till the rats.
When the Waun was overgrown and under-grazed they'd come, climbing up the poles and trunk of tree and defying all deterrents.
Rats as big as cats!
I never tried to do a Pied Piper trick with my mouth-harp, it would have been pointless.
So, I stopped the feeding and missed the many birds which came, like the regular shy jays, the finches and most of all the woodpeckers.
I've noticed a decline in sparrows and starlings in the fields nearby and there's been no cuckoo yet; it's late.
Often owls will call in twilight and dark and once, when my youngest was little, she was woken by the screech of a barn owl and was petrified.
The three most extraordinary landings have been :
- a Homer, who spend a few days on our moss-covered garage roof, taking a rest on a long journey
- a tame jackdaw who'd perch on your arm and talk away like he knew 'human'
- a single female pheasant who appeared on the grainy patio and proceeded to peck at the French windows for hours
I used to find dead young birds outside those same windows, after they'd flown straight at them, believing air.
Above the Waun beyond our garden, I often catch sight of circling buzzards and hear their high-pitched mewling.
There's ample prey in the long grass and young birds to capture mid-flight.
At times, a worry of adult crows or jackdaws will bombard the buzzard to protect their young, their frantic cawing piercing.
I've noticed swallows already arriving by the Taff.
Here in summer, when there's a multitude of insects, they sweep and swoop above marsh and moor, signing the sky.
When my two oldest were children, there was a row of thick-knit cypruses between us and our neighbours.
A blackbird family built a nest there and, with the help of a stepladder, my children and their friends would clamber up to view the eggs and then fledglings.
It was constructed dangerously close to ground level and I wasn't surprised when it was abandoned.
I adopted it and used it for creative writing lessons. It was a remarkable structure : moulded in mud and with a woven outer wall which contained all manner of things, from ribbon pieces to blue plastic to string.
Another blackbird - perhaps a younger generation of that same family - would sometimes sing from our fence as my older children practiced their cello and violin.
It was utterly breathtaking!
A human / animal ensemble in celebration of the moment.
And so to the present : the once and always green-emerging reed concertos from bushes and trees.
MONDAY, TWO BLACKBIRDS
Monday, as days are lengthening.
There are two blackbirds singing
in the artificial light
as though it were the sun ;
one in a cafe, dark tattoos
plumed into her arms
as she waits at tables ;
another on the bus behind me
(but I dare not turn )
who needs no stage to perform.
We're taken to the tree-tops
and the rising sun,
voices lifting us lark-like.
High notes resonate in bones
over rattling roads
and gargle of machines.
Monday, as morning listens.
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