Our Feathered Friends
- Details
- Written November 2020
The gangly pigeons (not unlike me); the crows always on the lookout for another morsel (also me?); the robins, fiercely territorial (aren't we all?); the magpies always ready for a fight (well, only if I have to); a variety of tits - blue, long-tailed, coal (O, the beauty of human variation too); the blackbirds with their song (definitely not me!); and the new arrivals - green parakeets - Welcome? No; the bullfinch, chaffinch and goldfinch - yes.
Once again the garden, and now these birds have prompted memories of times past.
· the cage at the back door of my boyhood home in Port Elizabeth with a mixture of budgies and canaries, and the chicken-run where my Saturday morning job was to clean the nests and roosts.
· Sitting on the verandah of the staff quarters at a Church of Scotland hospital in South Africa's Transkei where I spent a month as a medical student, and watching the swallows, or were they swifts, each evening. Years later we watched their descendants on the cliffs overlooking Folkestone harbour. And just this week we've spotted a few above here.
· Margaret standing on an ostrich egg on our 1964 honeymoon visit to Oudsthoorn. My sister painted an ostrich on another we bought on the visit. It's always been a little difficult to hang on a wall, but it's survived the years.
· Listening to the early morning cry of the fish eagle over the lake near Chikankata. And hearing that cry as Radio Zambia started up each morning. (Yes, I've tended to be an early bird!) And then the same over the Zambezi at the Victoria Falls, on Lake Malawi, or South Africa's Kozi Bay. It's also on the Zambian flag, a symbol of freedom (not quite what we feel in these days of lockdown.) And in contrast there are the raucous cries of the hadeda birds, especially as evening falls.
· Working in my Chikankata out-patients' office late one night and suddenly being visited by mother owl and half a dozen chicks waddling after her. I'm glad they didn't stay because I'm not a vet! But a year later, unsuccessfully trying to care for another owl with a fractured leg which ended up injected with formalin and pinned on a piece of driftwood on the piano.
· Waking up one morning at Chikankata to find mother duck on a near-to-hatch setting of eggs smothered by an army of marching ants. Hopes were dashed. But our daughter has been more successful raising chickens and ducks in her Surrey home.
· And now I carry with me memories of these weeks, watching the crow become ever tamer as he advances to pick up his morsel, and then wondering whether it really was a nightingale or just the common and garden hedge sparrow? And sorting out chaffinch and bullfinch. Or do we just settle for lbj - a little brown job? But Mr & Mrs Crow are back - Beaks and Beaksy we call them.
Memories can be beautiful, but I offer a word of caution. They can prove troublesome too. He's not my favourite, but a first-century letter-writer offered wise counsel: ' ... whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.' Or as Eric Idle sings carrying the cross towards the end of the Monthy Python film, Life of Brian: 'Always look on the bright side of life, Always look on the light side of life.'
Something else for the sky: once lockdown is over I'll be getting my kite out. The birds might wonder what it is.
May 2020