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The pigeons and the squirrels get along.

Below the garden wall a young squirrel

Forages for seeds

Stopping when she finds one

Alert to any competition

Then

On hind legs

Sits and eats.

A lazy wood-pigeon

Waddles down the path

Pecking aimlessly at anything

Which comes in view,

Back to back

They ignore each other

Only concerned when foreigners -

Magpies casing the garden

Humans putting out seed -

Interrupt their placid

Acceptance

At which point they disappear

But not for long

Having more in common

Than we with them.

Brian Hick June 2016

©copyright Sally Hick 17.6.26

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A swan, out below

The weir, has two grey cygnets

Snuggled on her back.

I'm dive-bombed

By a flock of swallows

Casually gleaning

Across subble fields.

Brian Hick summer 2015

©copyright Sally Hick 16.5.26

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During the storm the birds had disappeared

But this morning a blue tit fluttered through,

Stopping briefly at the coconut,

Before it dived across the hedge onto

The barren branches of the only tree

Left in our garden.  It soon flew away

But a pair of blackbirds swooped down to the fence

Eyeing the line of seeds, but did not stay.

A sparrow landed, flustered, hesitant

Then two wood pigeons dropped onto the shed

'Til, singly, they pecked their way along the rain

To find the sesame seeds among the bread.

            Spring seems a long way off but this quiet morn

            Life returned with birdsong in the dawn.

Brian Hick February 2014

©copyright Sally Hick 24.3.25

 886

Consider.....

Little bird why is your song so bright

On this grey morning, when the trees are dead

And not a hint of welcoming sunlight

To warm us as we struggle out of bed?

Could it be your limited brain size

Does not have room to contemplate the way

Things might turn out, so that your spirits rise

And cheerfully give thanks for the new day

When all we see is weeks of steaming trains,

Cold blasts and irritation at the thought

Of all we must endure befoe the gains

Of late spring warmth and all last summer bought.

          You sing so me as if there were no need

          To take thought for the future and its seed.

Brian Hick Jan 2011

©copyright Sally Hick 11.1.23

 A twitter of starlings greet us as we leave.

Practicing their autumn aerobatics

They wait, each posed atop a chosen twig

Before as one they lift, swirl and drop

Tighter than Red Arrows as they turn

To  perch along the ridge and chimney pots.

Brian Hick 2009

©copyright Sally Hick 31.8.22