Lockdown Birdwatch
In between wondering just how much chocolate I must buy to make it last a whole week and working on university assignments, I have spent many hours during lockdown in the back garden waiting for birds. Waiting with my camera to hand. I probably shouldn’t have my camera – that would, after all, guarantee a rarer visitor. But I want to take photos of the regulars too.
Like the blue tit which picked up so much fluff in one beakful it looked like a feathered Father Christmas – click. And then there was one of its extended family, a great tit, posing in the tall grass while looking for insects – click. Yet another of the family, a long-tailed tit, dangled deftly from an overhanging branch just lingering long enough – click. A repeat visitor, and nowhere near as shy as its reputation, is the dunnock. It doesn’t seem to mind that I’m only a few feet away and seems to hang around most of the time. Click, click, click. My small garden is witness to so many comings and goings of the bird kind. It’s business as usual for them.
But a photograph is silent. And it is anything but silent. So many different songs all sung together. Avian improv. And barely any distant traffic noise to interrupt. At first, I can hear a song thrush and a chiffchaff. But tune in and there’s much more – finches, gold and green, blackbirds, woodpigeons, the odd burst of merriment from a green woodpecker, multiple robins and others. Layers of sound streamed for free but so valuable.
I am eager to see the first swallows of the year but I can’t go looking for them, so I lay on the grass, under the consolation prize of warm spring sunshine. I look skyward. High, high up are two buzzards circling in the vapour-trail-free blue. The occasional pigeon scuds over. I don’t see any swallows this time. I’m not sure how long my eyes were closed. I will see them soon.
Oh, and as for my minor conundrum – I’m yet to buy enough chocolate to last between weekly shopping trips…
Sharon’s blog – Wildlife on the Run.
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