Although the magpies have gone I do have a rook, a crow and a raven in my shade tunnel. Collectively known as the crows. Sounds like the title of a new book. None of them can fly properly at the moment which is why I was given them but they've palled up with each other and there is no squabling. They sit in a row on a branch then scuttle away when they see me.
Because they all came to me as grown birds they are quite rightly not used to humans and still hurry away in spite of seeing me with the plates of food I bring them. I was so used to M.Magpie coming when I called and sitting on my head that part of me would like them not to be so fearful but that won't help them when they get back into the world of birds. I don't want them to be like Moses's wife and be a stranger in a strange land.
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck Pocket tells me. Ah you've been studying the Dalai Lama I say but he tucks his paws in and tells me that those who play with cats must expect to be scratched. Cevantes? I query but he's already excluded me from his line of vision by shutting his eyes.
Here he is spouting Charlie Chaplin who purportedly said that he who feeds a hungry animal feeds his own soul and wouldn't I like that? I told him he'd already had three breakfasts and had just polished off Nancy's who sits there unbothered. Nancy has the softest fur ever - like stroking fog. The raven is a similar size to Nancy now and still has growing to do. Unlike M.Magpie it will never swing on the bird feeder like he used to do. In fact the bird station has been taken over by a colony of sparrows - hundreds of them swing on the peanut feeders and there is no room for the darkling thrush that used to visit or the woodpecker with its glorious red plummage. Once I saw a sparrow hawk sitting on the stones underneath the feeder - a strange sight as I've not seen one at rest nor so near a house. I expect Pocket has been on patrol and scared it away. The sparrows seem unbothered about either of them.
I read the news today - oh boy. I thought this hedgehog might have broken into a Beatles song - about a lucky man who made the grade. When I change their papers I make sure there are no harrowing or fear mongering headlines or gaudy photos - which is difficult as most of the papers people kindly bring in are Daily Mails. And talking of hedgehogs did you know that a group of hedgehogs is called an
array - but as they are solitary creatures in the wild it would be unlikely to have the chance to see an array of them unless they were round the back of the bike sheds having a smoke.
When I toyed with writing a book about a rook, a crow and a raven Rocket awoke from slumber and told me
that outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. Who told you that ? I asked. When he said it was Pocket who denied ever hearing of someone called Groucho Marx I decided to go in search of an array of hedgehogs.
Have planted the sweet pea seeds for the summer flowering. They have avoided being eaten by mice and are now sporting long shoots which one day will support an array (not of hedgehogs) of pink blooms.
The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate
when frost was spectre -grey,
And Winter's dregs mad desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted night
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death - lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full- hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
In blast-beruffled plume
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around.
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good -night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
