Animals

Country diary: a scruffy wood pigeon finds peace in the grey morning bustle


The wood pigeon looks dejected: a raggedy young bird, fluffed like a mop, feathers grey as the ditchwater sky, an eye peeping down at a sodden November morning, the peeling gilt of lime leaves scattered in the mud, sunlight drained between rains. The temperature is perishing. It squats on a tree stump surrounded by bent nettles and an acre or so of hammered holes that are the hoof prints of an enormous Highland bull and two half-sized versions of himself. Any ambitions his sons may have of testing themselves against this great creature are dashed by the bull’s crushing gaze.

The weather’s indifference does the same for birds. A single pied wagtail flirts between the bulls as a band of jackdaws clatters into an old ash tree, the bright-eyed insurgents vanishing into holes in its trunk. Down the lane, there are blackbirds mixed up with redwings that may have travelled together from Scandinavia; how do these northern birds get on with the stay-at-homes?

Watchful robins venture from hedges to tzeep an alert, somewhere between resignation and hope, like bored security guards. A coven of long-tailed tits flick around trees shaken loose of leaves to offer a draughty architecture of dark, wet boughs to them and the blue tits, nuthatches and other secretive birds; now exposed, their scuttling is like watching shoplifters on CCTV. Mutations of fieldfare roam the soggy wastes of ploughed earth and drowned worms.

A farmer scatters seed from a quad bike over a grey clay quagmire, a show of initiative that comes from a history haunted by famine that feels, on a day such as this, not far behind the hedge. In a scrubby slum of elm and hazel is a tumble of mossy stones – all that’s left of a lost story of starvation and ruin.

Today is a leaf breaking loose from the sighing tree to drift and fall alone. The scratty wood pigeon, exposed to the dangers of sparrowhawks and peregrines, looks beatific rather than depressed, like a sad song heard from the other side of a cold, wet November morning, maybe Connie Francis singing Who’s Sorry Now?



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