Falling in love
Falling in love
It was 8 or 9 years ago now. One crisp and overcast winter afternoon I noticed the chaotic chatter, black wings dancing as a flock of birds were incoming over our little woodland.
There they perched high up, manic conversations- which felt like ‘look what we found’ and ‘yes, this place’.
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This visiting continued, daily - although their stays were for varying lengths of time, their conversation always noisy. I found myself waiting for them, eager to hear them. To see them, study them, bask in the slightly raucous, erratic energy they brought with them. They brought me joy.
That clatter of black wings, their calls which I could hear fields away, almost like they were calling to the land here as they approached her. A ritual, everyday ensued - their visits where they seemed to honour the trees for which they perched, clustered in their flock together high, high up. Every now and again, a distinct single note call from what, or more who I have always felt is the matriarch bird and like a flash of black chaos they would all take to the air. Sometimes some of the birds flitting and diving.
On winter days, when the sun was low slung in the sky, they would shape shift their form and become cream or white. Even in the reddest sunset when they sky danced at dusk, their glossy feathers would look red for a second.
As the days grew lighter, brighter, warmer. As the trees grew heavy with fat buds and the green returned to the landscape, they built nests - high up in our little wood.
I watched how they would select the ‘right stick’. Pull the twig, sometimes after further inspection then literally chuck it on the floor. Or take it to their nest site, then after deciding it didn’t fit, or their mate deciding it wasn’t right - chucking it!
The floor of the Rookery was a sea of twigs. Discarded. But their nests, so high up - big and beautiful. So much precision- these nests needed to hold precious eggs and chicks, I could see how much time and thought went into making them ‘just so’.
It was this first spring of The Rookery, that I realised they were now my neighbours. And how welcome they were here.
I was absolutely besotted with them. I listened as the first screeches of newly hatched rooks whistled into the soundscape. It was their collective calls which woke me before dawn everyday and their calls I fell asleep to. I slept in the hammock next to them often.
They are such ancient, wise, mystical beings to me. Their community, their sense of community- their devotion, ritual and loyalty to each other and their rookery is a magic all of its own. We can learn or perhaps re-member, be guided by, be enchanted by and be in awe of these incredible beings.
They bring me immeasurable joy. They are jokers, lovers, chatterboxes.
I find myself waking in the small hours of the morning to paint, draw, write about them. They are diviners, weather tellers, story tellers,
