Sky dancers

Walking up the hill on a gray day, past the low cottage where Glyn is eating his solitary breakfast and up the emerald lane we disturb a family of four young ravens, newly fledged and full of the first joys of awkward flight. They rise into the wind and are tossed around in the turbulent sky while their parents sail on the ocean of air like anthracite bird ships, so in tune with their element, so sure and swift.
The parents dance with the wind, folding back wings to tumble in ecstasy, hanging still on the wind's edge. The young ones will learn how to balance the air on their soot black wings. For now they delight in their stumbling flight as we watch and wish for wings.

Birdsong and sunshine

On another blue sky day, in the early morning, we sit just outside the bedroom while the rest of the house is sleeping, and together we take some time to listen to the birds singing the sun to rise, a beautiful song that each day wraps itself around the world and enables this everyday miracle to happen.

A day full of birds

Outside Her studio window wild birds flock in the cold to the bushes where bird feeders hang.
A robin, bright eyed, red breasted.

Gangs of house sparrows that feed on all the different foods.

Great tits that bully and fight with the smaller birds and love the new suet pellets that are so very yellow.

Tiny dunnock, deceptively brown but with all shade of blues hidden in the feathers.

Rainbow dressed male chaffinch that feed on the seeds and glean the ground below.

Blue tits, bright and beautiful.

Female blackbirds and their bright yellow beaked partners, a whole flock, gathered together as the ground is so hard they cannot feast on worms, but love the trays of suet mixed with fruits and nuts.

Not bad pictures really, when you consider that She took them through the studio windows and we know how dirty Her windows are!

Fur and feathers all

On an early blue sky morning I climbed the bare winter bones of the great ash tree. All was quiet, just the distant sound of a wave on sand. Then into the tree came one black cleric, soot shining feather cloak, beak like a spear, bead eyed, loud.

And soon there were more, their cloaks flapping, down from the sky they came, to shout at orange cats in the bright branches, to flap and caw. But they did not get too close, for though they are sharp of beak they are wise enough to know that we are sharp of claw.

A wish for wings

More birds

Over the warm weekend we watched from the window as birds flitted around the feeders. House sparrows...

and robin's with scarlet breasts.

At first when the blackcaps came they were wary and shy, hiding in the tight tangle of clematis, but they soon grew confident and both male and female came to the feeders, dusky monochrome delicate birds.

And the great and sharp beaked rook came too, bead eyed and glistening with purple and blue shining in his midnight plumage.

The day full of birds

We watched bright birds all day, through the window, and they danced through the trees that still hold tight to their winter branches while the sunshine brought butterflies and the promise of summer, and even the first lizard of the year.
She painted quietly through the day in Her studio.

Light and flight and a courtship dance of love

There is a certain slant of light that shines bright on a ginger cat and makes every hair glow with an orange gloss.

Sunshine peeled us away from the stretched out comfort of the sofa of ginger and into the wilds. Although the wind on the top of the hill was cold the sunshine held a whisper of spring that could be clearly felt in sheltered places where fingers of wind could not reach. We could hear the sea on the faraway shore, rolling onto the sand.

A sky so blue, landscape still coloured by the russet bones of bracken and the sky criss-crossed by the vapor trails of distant dragons.

Around Pixie, on the rock, small brown bells that had been purple heather flowers rattled in the cold. Elmo hid in the dark sun shadow and watched the world moving towards spring, the buzzards circle together and the raven dance a courtship dance of joy.

Bluesky full of birds and the storm

For a few days the sun shone bright. The sky was so blue. The window at Mr Griffith's house was a warm place to sit in the winter sun. We walked and the sky was full of birds.








Then the rain came thick and fast and with it the wind and both scrubbed the colour from the sky. Now as the thin light begins to fall from the sky the fire breathes and wind circles the chimney. In the house it is warm. Outside a storm builds and there is a sense of unease. We can smell the salt sea spray from the wild waves.

Elmo's tree

In my tree bright birds sit like chiming golden fruits. I climb into the tree through the green and twisted branches, calling to the bright birds, asking them to be my friend, to come to me and sit on my claw.




But they do not come. They fly away. And so I melt down from the tree and away. Birds have little faith in cats.

Feeding the birds

I sit like the bright sun in the dark thorn trees. Today I am helping to feed the birds, to fill the birdfeeders. Then the birds will think us a benevolence of cats, a kindness of cats, a generosity of cats, when in fact we are...




A danger of cats, a hunting of cats, a murder of cats.




But She saw me and She chased me away saying, "I do not feed the birds to fatten them up for you, Sharp Tooth. I feed the birds to charm them from the trees and watch their bright colour flash and hear their wings like music as they thread through the thorn trees. So be gone and go catch mice."
We think She is joking and She feeds the birds to delight our eyes. Because She loves us.

Through the window

We have been watching, through the window. Birds come and go, from feeder to feeder. Bright jewels of birds, fast. And today a woodpecker! Fearsome, sharp beaked, bright eyed, with a red flash of feather and pied plumage.

So Blue

Today we have been watching the birds.




So fast. So blue. They flitter through the dark of the thorn trees like bright jewels.