There’s a big ash tree at the bottom of the garden, in full view from the bedroom window. When you stare out in winter before the day’s thought-processes have started to kick in, it’s possible to discern in the bare branches the bearded features of both DH Lawrence and Charles Darwin.
It’s a funky old tree and touch wood – note good choice of words here — no sign of chalara. Its big, wide elephant-coloured trunk — another good word, I’m on fire today – is about ten yards from the window of my writing-hut, so it’s a good target for blank stares between paragraphs.
When we first moved in I heard a treecreeper’s high, thin call trickling down from high in the ash tree’s thin branches, and I put it on the house list. I felt – not exactly guilty about it, but as the first certainties got a little eroded by time, I wondered just a little. Then last summer in the same tree, Eddie and I saw a treecreeper scurrying up the trunk in the merry mousey way that is part of the treecreeper’s inheritance. So that’s all right then.
A day or so ago, in the final frenzies of the book I’m writing, I gave my eyes and brain a break and turned to that gloriously inviting window. Naturally I looked first to the vaster expanses of the marsh, but I picked up a flicker of movement from the tail of my left eye, and there was the ash and there once again was its bird.
There is a special sort of delight that’s reserved for the not-uncommon but seldom-seen. As if the man on the door had ushered you through, aware that you had been issued with an access-all-areas pass into the wild world. The stuff that normally goes on in secret is briefly open to you.
That flickering, jerky progress up the trunk, the parachute descent to the bottom so that it can make this climbing, skittering feeding-run all over again, the startling white of the belly, the busy probing of that sharp curved tool of a beak… its sudden vanishing was a call to duty. I turned back to the screen and my book.
Call it research. The book is to be called The Meaning of Birds. There’s a meeting in my hut tomorrow to discuss illustrations. I hope the treecreeper will attend but if he’s busy, I’ll understand.
A really lovely blog, Simon. We can all relate to it.
e are off to S Africa on saturday, to the Kruger Park, and would love to see lots of things creeping, big and small.
Have a great trip Bob, look forward to hearing about it when you get back.
So please include the sparrowhawk. Not liked by many as they take the little birds but I argue that just one or two keep this beauty alive. I was chatting to my neighbour today when over her shoulder I spotted those amber staring eyes from the corner of my own. A flash of recognition and it was gone.
Nothing like a sparrowhawk, Anthony Powell talks about quotes ‘instantaneous dramas played to an audience of one.’ That’s a sparrowhawk.
Lovely description as always! Good luck with the book
Thanks David.
Good words aplenty; and in a good order, as ever.
Treecreepers always remind me of “home”; I think because I’d never seen a Nuthatch until I moved from (Northern) Ireland nearly thirty years ago, where the latter doesn’t occur. Such a colourful and less furtive bird of treetrunks rather draws the eye and, somehow, I remember Treecreepers being more prominent in County Antrim, but perhaps just for absence of a showy rival.
All best wishes for the new book.
The thing about nuthatches, is unlike most birds, they have their beak at the bottom and the feet at the top.
Just what I needed after a busy day – you transported me to another place, perfectly visible, completely tranquil. Thanks!
Delighted you enjoyed it.
Beautifully descriptive, I have those wonderful images now too! Thanks Simon
Many thanks for kind words.
Ah, you lucky,lucky man, although I know that deep down it is not luck but damned hard work to get to the position you are in, keep ’em coming!!
Never discount the luck factor in any human enterprise.
As tweeted…Best writer on the planet. Check out the sporting backbook#inspiring.
Thanks a million Greg.
I am so pleased to be able to read your blog… I have missed your Saturday column in the Times since you stopped. We have a 100 year old sycamore at the end of the garden that now has a tree preservation order on it, and it also has the face of a tree spirit that can be seen in winter, before the leaves reappear.
Trees are so much more rewarding than inkblots don’t you think?
‘There is a special sort of delight that’s reserved for the not-uncommon but seldom-seen.’ I couldn’t agree more. I was walking in some woodland yesterday and heard the needle – like call of Goldcrests nearby. Then I saw one, no more than 4 feet away; impossibly tiny, constantly on the move, a little ball of energy. A bird I hear all the time, but rarely see other than catching a fleeting glance high up in a tree. Glorious.
Wonderful, they really are special little birds.