Tag: bird

Lapwings at Melverley

I saw my first lapwing as a boy on a farm belonging to a family friend. It was a long way off, and all I remember is the tuft on its head. I remember thinking how magical it looked – especially to someone brought up in suburban London! It made my heart beat a little faster – the love affair had begun!

Decades later and I find myself in the Midlands, where, thankfully, lapwing are still not that uncommon, though nationally they are on the red list as of great concern.

In Shropshire, they can fairly regularly be seen at Venus Pool.

One spring I was treated to the wonderful spectacle of lapwings acrobatic, crazy flight and song, just over the Shropshire border in Staffordshire, as they chased, and were chased by, corvids, gulls and each other!

Their name lapwing may derive from the Anglo Saxon word for “leap” and “reel”, and as they displayed, I could see why!

Today it was the winter solstice of 2023, and I was treated to wonderful view of a lapwing flock wheeling around in the skies around Melverley:

A Miracle Has Taken Place!

An every day miracle!

This is a line in a Mary Oliver poem about birds’ eggs hatching in her neighbourhood:

“And just like that, like a simple
neighbourhood event, a miracle is
taking place.”

from ‘This Morning’

I was lucky enough to be able to take these photographs of two Canada geese with their gorgeous goslings at Venus Pool recently.

As they wandered to the water’s edge, it really looked like they were embarking on the day’s swimming lesson!

Venus Pool is such a beautiful site, and many everyday miracles take place there every day!

We Live Amongst the Birds

On a recent walk by the River Severn in Buildwas I managed to photograph this chiffchaff singing, and I thought it went well with something I had previously written about birdsong in April…

~

We live

Amongst the birds

~

Their noisy calls disturb

The silence of the morning

~

But this is their dawning

Of another day

~

And it is not for me

To say

That quietness should prevail

~

Because I see

How empty life would be

If they should ever fail.

~

Many bird species are in decline in the UK, so please do what you can to feed birds and live a nature-friendly lifestyle!

~

The Freedom to Fly Wild

Shropshire has many wild places, and The Stiperstones feels particularly so.

On a recent visit on a beautiful sunny spring day I was lucky enough to encounter a ring ouzel (relatively rare in Shropshire), making harsh “chack chack” calls, just like a stonechat, before dashing out from the undergrowth, just like a blackbird, and going to perch in a nearby tree.

I heard (but did not see) a curlew, and there were some other wonderful close encounters with the inhabitants that grace the skies over this wonderful hill… A kestrel was hunting overhead at the start of my walk:

And it was quickly followed by a raven, also enjoying the spring sunshine:

Just a few days earlier we had given some ex-battery hens a new home – and it all got me thinking about wildness, and freedom, and what we and the birds share…

~

The freedom to live,

The freedom to think,

The freedom to be,

To fly in the wild;

This, I and the birds,

We all receive.

Blackbird Sings

Spring has arrived in the UK, bringing birdsong and occasional warmth and sunshine! Everywhere blackbirds are singing, and one bird singing outside my window in Shrewsbury inspired these few lines..

Blackbird sings

And it rings

Through my world

With happiness.

This particular blackbird was photographed at Atcham, a small village just outside Shrewsbury, in March 2022

A Glory of Swans

In July, I was walking by the River Severn in Shropshire and encountered a group of beautiful swans, as photographed below. They were a glorious sight and I tried to capture the moment in this poem:

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A glory of swans

On the River Severn

As if heaven

Could be found here

In this place

On earth

As if this moment

Was pre-ordained

From before

All birth.

Here and now

On the River Severn.

~