September 30th

 

sweet bird song ventured

unsure from flagging branches

farewell till the thaw

Birds seem to be singing over the last few days. Unusual for this time of year, maybe they are migrating, saying goodbye. We’ll hear them again in the Spring.

August 9th

orchestra soundcheck

cockerel wren dove and blackbird

a dawn performance

Up early as feel over hot, listened to the world, it’s a bit late in the year for a proper dawn chorus, most birds have nested, their young have fledged, but I heard a distant cockerel, an agitated wren chirping, doves cooing and a blackbird’s warning call. If you listen carefully to the silence, it’s deafening.

August 4th

smog choked chestnut trees

blurred in the grainy drizzle

shelter tiny hearts

wretched bird song stirs

toothless smiles from old grey cowls

pausing to listen

I went to Tate Britain yesterday, to check out the Another London exhibition of photography from 1930-1980. I loved the social history of it, familiar yet wholly unfamiliar through the passage of time, fashion, bomb damage and new architecture. And all the more interesting because the esteemed photographers on show were foreign visitors to London, hence they took photos of what they found interesting. Perhaps things that locals might have considered mundane.

A silly irrational part of me though what a wonderful stroke of luck it would be if I saw one of my parents in some old photo, of course I didn’t, but there was something intimate to me about the whole exhibition.

As a Londoner it felt personal to me, I walked round it with a slight smile, or a sad sense of something lost, when an old memory was revived by an image. London can be cruel and ugly, but also beautiful and inspiring. It is one of my favourite places on Earth.

So, two Haiku’s today, in honour of old London and old photographs. All photo credits to Tate website and Another London Exhibition. Associated exhibition book linked here by Helen Delaney.

June 24th

 

innocent bullfinch

red rusty gate sighs close by

calls his mate and flies

A bullfinch landed right near me in the garden today. It’s quite rare to see one up close. It was oblivious to me as I was sitting so still, so it sat on a low branch in one of the rowan trees and cooed it’s sad rusty gate song very quietly. I think it saw the cat after a few seconds when her ears pricked up in curiosity. The bullfinch and his mate, which was perched in the willow, then flew together into the eucalyptus, where he sang for a bit more, then they both flew off. Lovely colourful birds.

pic from rspb website

June 19th

Edgar Allan Poe

skull and pirate treasure trail

gold-bug cipher bite

We had the washing carousel out, which made a kind of tent like secluded wind break, but still allowed the sun to filter through. It was kind of like how I imagined a medina in Marrakesh would be like, with a nice patch to sit on outdoors and drink mint tea / smoke shisha, behind thin curtains, except with our bed linen hanging out to dry instead of un-dyed natural cotton billowing.

It was nice, hadn’t had much time to think of late, the day was warm as well. So I just sat down, then lay down and looked at the sky. Listened to the birds. A blackbird and a song thrush had a competition. One was in the oak, the other in the Eucalyptus tree, but it might have been in the Willow, it was hard to tell.

I felt safe being surrounded by our flowers. One should not underestimate the therapeutic and reviving qualities of a loved garden.

D then noticed something, a small golden beetle near the herbs. It looked amazing, neither of us had seen anything like it. It reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s (conveniently his name is 5 syllables) short story, The Gold-Bug, from Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

Except with a bit of research, we confirmed they’d be no buried treasure to dig up. The offending critter was a Rosemary Beetle, yes, they love Rosemary and their larva can destroy it, they are a non native pest. We have tons of Rosemary growing. Neither of us like to kill any animal, no matter how small, so we’re going to try to reason with him!

(all photos by me)

other stuff happening. A bee on the knapweed.

A bee in the foxgloves (an action shot – woooo)

June 5th

Song interrupted

yellowhammer gets no bread

never mind the cheese

Just a silly Haiku today. I was running on the moors and I could hear a Yellowhammer sing its distinctive “A little bit of bread and no cheeeese” song. When I got near him, he shut up mid song. I’m always blundering into bird territories and annoying them, you’d think they’d be used to me by now.

May 28th

 

Blackbird distracted

Goldfinch singing, steals his perch

king for a moment

The blackbird owns this tree. He disappeared for a bit and the Goldfinch moved in. Their songs are so delicate. Although I love blackbird song, it was nice to get a new record on the jukebox.

(this image from rspb, image above by me)

March 18th

Furious tail wag

With war songs the tiny dart

Clamours a warning

 

Wren’s are feisty, for such little birds they show enormous pluck when defending their territory. They have no intention of giving quarter when a big human oaf goes running between *their* trees. And they sing so loudly too. Not only that, but they do so in a place where you can see them, they do not hide. They sing at your eye level. They are staring you out, jumping from vantage point to vantage point to get the best position to stand their ground from. And if they really take offence, they bristle up their little feathers and fly at you, not to poke your eye out Hitchcock style or anything, just to buzz you, to try to get rid of you. They are not afraid! Wrens rock.

(Image from the RSPB website)

February 28th

Blackbirds duel at dusk,

Songs soaked in battleship grey,

Echoes bounce off steel.

 

Most of my Haikus seem to be about birds. That’s because birds are awesome. Tonight, I left work around 6.30, it was pretty much dark. The car park was quiet apart from two blackbirds having a sing off. I could see one of them quite clearly, taking the high point in the photo above. The little spot on top of the tower.

The complexity of a blackbird song is impressive, trills and tuneful whistles, no two compositions the same. One would start, then the other would reply. It was loud. This is the the time of year when territory is all important. Spring is pretty much here. Time to find a mate and nest. The two combatants were fighting it out for the large but spartan landscape of our work car park in Stevenage. For what little foliage there is.

February 24th

 

Old twisted peat cart,

I followed your buried tracks,

As you sink and rust.

 

In the moors there is an old discarded peat cart, when I first lived in the area it actually looked like a peat cart, but over the years it has slowly deteriorated and sunk into the peat it used to carry to the edge of the moor, where it would be unloaded. I wanted to capture a sense of melancholy about it, everything returns to the earth at some point.

I don’t know how old the cart is, but peat extraction was still an industry in the area until the 1960s. The location of the peat cart is in one of the wettest areas of Flitwick moor. It’s quite hard to see in this photo, but I wanted show how wet the area is. There are a lot of silver birches in the moors as well, as can be seen by the tree on the left.

A closer view of the peat cart.

And finally a photo of this part of the moor, with another silver birch, it is exceptionally peaty and wet here in winter, so when I’m running, I have to walk through, making sure to not roll my ankle or lose half my leg in a mucky peat puddle! Anyway, it was a beautiful day today, the woods and moors were full of bird song. Their battle to establish territory has begun.