Feathered friends...

DOING a little bit of blogging-up (catching up on regular stop-offs which have been a little neglected due to general busyness) I came across this lovely post and picture from Just Hanging with Michele about birds, winter feeding and Hitchcock (well the comments flow into the Hitchcock theme).

I just love this picture she took of the little bird tracks, it makes you want to go ‘accchhhhhhhh’. I just love the little bit where the bird has done a complete circle, too cute for words.

And it brought to mind the birds outside the house where I grew up. We would feed them most mornings and on a Saturday when we were lazing about watching telly, they would frequently fly and crash into the window as if they knew we were up but hadn’t yet come out to feed them.

I loved frosty mornings as a child. At one stage there was a plank in our garden, I don’t actually know if this ever had a purpose or was just tossed there by one of us, but on frosty mornings, you would see a bird-track with a little slide and then another bird track. I used to love seeing that, and would love to get a picture of that…

But here is a little bad graphic I composed earlier in the meantime to put you in the picture.



I remember also sitting gazing out my brothers’ room to the trees out the back where the branches had wound themselves in a circle. There were many occasions where I would see starlings sitting on that circle facing each other like an feathered King Arthur’s court all chirping away to each other. I’d imagine they were discussing wildly important things like all the stray cats in the area and where the best food was, you know yourself!

I’ve looked at the trees as an adult and the circle has long grown out but for what seemed like a long time I just loved that view.

One time when my daughter was about three years old and sick when we were staying there and she was lying in the room formerly known as the brothers’ room.

She used to love Martin Stephenson, well I did and she did by proxy and I was telling her the story of the circular court of birds when Martin (warning this pic makes him look like a boy band guy but while gorgeous he certainly wasn't and isn't) crooned out one of my favourites ‘Matthew and me’ which starts off with the words ‘sing little bird sing sing’.

She looked up at me all pale, frail and drained-looking saying ‘he’s asking the birds to sing for me’.

‘He surely is darling.’

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