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Writer's pictureCrone

Avian angst

For hours and hours during the day and evening, the wrens have been on high alert. the garden feels like it's in a permanent state of emergency.



I think I have seen the baby ones in the hedges and I have heard them whistling.


One night, I went out and the wrens were coming closer and closer. Eventually both parents were flitting around and alarming right in front of me - it wasn't ME, as nothing changed if I walked away. Then, as I looked where they were looking, we, wrens and I between us, spooked the stray cat - who is black and white. He scurried off and the wrens quieted gradually, and it was only when I heard the male sing that I felt they sensed danger was over. Soon after, I saw one head into the honeysuckle to feed the babies.


The cat, meanwhile, went into the bushes where the robins and blackbird nest.


I am still seeing both male blackbirds. This one has a healed wound over his left eye. I saw the wound a few months ago.



This female is the younger one, not Mrs B. It's the same male - who has a white patch on his chest and the injured eye. I have not seen the young blackbird.


This male sings beautifully in the evenings.



As for the robins, they have been scarce. I am not sure if those two adults are the same one. Neither have the scar under the right eye. And there is one who has a whole load of missing feathers under the chin and a mottled breast... which may be Mottled Breast. But all are shy and keeping clear of me, the starlings and, one hopes, the cats.



I mentioned to a neighbour about Bobbit and they too had noticed his absence. He used to come down to their kitchen door.


The tits seem OK. But maybe that's just because I can't tell them apart. Or indeed tell if they are adult or young.


The first two are the same bird.



And the starlings are omnipresent.



So, I said that I was almost at the point of being unable to bear the pain with Bobbit and Tengu. Then I saw a squirrel fight and one falling out of a tree. Every time I thought of it, I heard the smack against the wood fence after a 12 or 16 foot free fall and felt a jar of agony run through my body. People say, oh, they are resilient. Well, maybe. Wolves will still hunt with a broken leg. That doesn't mean there isn't pain, fear and misery.


Leanne said this is why she can't bear to put her camera out: it breaks her heart each time one dies.


It's dreadful being a wild animal.


Yes, and how do they die? Roads, starvation due to habitat loss, forced proximity due to rich resources in certain places (increasing stress/aggression and disease), introduced predators and competitors, insect decline, weakened immune system due to stress and inappropriate food, poison, trapping, hunting, shooting, loss of a parent through any of the above.


Sure, there'd always have been pain and struggle and death - but the increase is exponential and it's down to us.


I still believe that there is joy and there are periods of peace, comfort, pleasure. But I also believe we have made their lives unaccountably harder. And we are not doing anything about most of it. Our responses are puny and self-centred.


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