Bird Talk

I think I mentioned in an early post (What Kind of Poet are You) that a great many of my poems include birds, particularly the early ones. I actually have a whole pamphlet of poems titled A Landscape With Birds. It’s published by Hedgehog Press. While birds are still a great source of inspiration and I love to think of them as commentators on the behaviour of humanity, these days I write other non-bird stuff too. However, events have taken a turn and birds are on my mind.

About ten days ago two small herring gull fledglings took up residence on the lean to roof of our kitchen. This has created no small degree of consternation in the household. The cat is miffed, to say the least because they are occupying her favourite look out place. They have pooped all over the roof and on the velux window; they cry and whimper A LOT. This is as nothing compared to their parents. I don’t know about helicopter parents but herring gull parents are always there, always shouting instructions at them and bellowing interdicts at us. One of the parents has definitely got it in for my husband and seems to recognise him even when he goes out. It shouts and swoops low over his head. Frankly it’s all a bit terrifying. And yet.

And yet we have become weirdly attached to these little creatures. I put out a tray of water on the window ledge because it was so hot earlier in the week and I like the way they peer in through the window and tap at the glass. One bird had an injured wing but that seems to be healing now and the relief at seeing it able to fully extend both wings was massive. I am definitely looking forward to the day they spread those wings and fly away from my roof but they have reminded me that all birds are amazing, not just the pretty ones and not just the corvids that we poets obsess over. There will be gull poems in the fullness of time but here’s a couple of other bird focused poems to be going on with.

Beach Crow

We sit on the beach, watch the crow

fly up, let go

the shell to smash down on the shingle.

Again and again,

sunlight on feathers,

lap and echo of wave on stones.

Again and again,

We watch the crow repeat

repeat its flight and drop until,

shell cracked, morsel released,

it lands

to gorge upon the meat.

Jackdaws

with

their platinum-bead eyes and that

“what the fuck do you think

you’re looking at?” expression

have no regard

for the sensibilities of people who

only put out bird feeders

to attract blue tits and chaffinches;

they just turn up and trash the place,

knowing that even though you claim to be

mad at them for gate-crashing your

garden party, you won't shoo them away

because their black feathers are sleek

and speak to you of Parisian punk -

a look that not just any bird can pull off -

I mean, have you checked out a rook lately?

Jackdaws know that if you could be a bird,

they are exactly the one that you would want to be.