The Buzzard....walking alone and free.....I've stolen someone else's grief.

Yesterday  morning following the kwee kwee call of a buzzard in a bank of trees way on the other side

of the steep hill I'm walking up,

I'm rewarded with full sight of him perched on a branch in an ash tree...still calling his kwee kwee into the sky.

And this is him as I walk backwards higher up the hill...my camera trained on the spot ...and I get a different view of him.  It's magical ...his great span of wings, the lines and dots and scalloped pattern of his feathers, the size of him,

 his sleek proud head...the surprise gift of him, captured in my lens, accompanies me all day like a smooth pebble in my pocket that I can touch and remember. 

A few minutes after seeing the buzzard I'm so sad to find this dead female blackbird on the road...her eyes pecked out. I lay her gently on the grass bank out of the path of cars. It's not the first time I've seen a  flattened blackbird on my walk.

The  early light  flooding the fields is wonderful ... sparkling clean and clear. 

I'm so grateful for the footpath that takes me into the marvel of this landscape

every day.

A few hours later I'm in the company of shreiking peacocks, and my great nephew and his  grandmother, visiting Wildwood at Escot park near Honiton,  a wonderful country park with great things for children to do.

Including minting a Saxon Penny

in the replica of a Saxon village complete with a smithy, round house and young man in a rough white Saxon tunic who is very informative about the history of the Angles, the Jutes and Saxons. I  am very impressed with how my 8 year old great nephew knows all the answers to his questions, like where the names of the week originate  from, while they sit by the fire, minting the penny, bashing it out 

with  a mallet.

The playful speedy antics of the otters are a lovely entertainment.

 We watch a display of birds of prey... which of course have to be caged as well...

Bengal owl...

falcon...

vulture...

red kite...

I feel very lucky to have seen the buzzard flying free in my woodland neighbourhood that morning.

TODAY

There is a thick duvet of mist lying over the valley this morning.

 The air is unbelievably still and warm and soft. 

The sky belongs to the sound of birds.

 On the road I'm treated to bright flash of green and cream and red - a green woodpecker sweeps out of tree above my head.....like this one which visited the garden briefly a few weeks ago. The first and only time I've seen it. Another sight to treasure. 

When I stop to take a photo of my favourite Belgian Blue, the one who always comes to the gate first to say hello, two runners come panting up the farm track and also stop to say hello and catch their breath. It's rare for me to encounter anyone else on my walks. It feels like an amazing privilege to walk alone and free in all this peaceful beauty ....as if it belongs just to me.

On the way home I stop in the village to buy bunches of bronze and cream  incurved chrysanthemums from allotment man...and  my fruit box from Riverford Organics has been delivered ...plums, cape gooseberries, bananas, pears, apples.

While I'm standing at the open back door in the heat of the sun, biting into a plum I suddenly notice that two tiny, suede brown, speckled, stubby-tailed wrens are hopping around my soaked walking boots which I've put out to dry on the coir mat...just by my feet...taking no notice of me...

I feel like I've been visited by a pair of miniature angels. 

It lifts me out of the shadow of the dream I had last night...

I'm driving...I see an upturned bicycle at the side of the road, a child lying beside it...I stop and run to him...fearful I don't know how to do mouth to mouth.....then someone else it there....they are doing it...I hold the boy's hand...it's warm.

 Then the resuscitator  looks at me and shakes his head...I look to the sky and shriek and scream and wail....and then it turns out that it's Robin who has died...for the second time...and I have to tell my mother...and I don't know how I will...and then she says she knows....

and all Robin's tall men friends and my tall nephews are holding me ...hugging me .. and one of them says "Let go, don't hold back".....but my knees buckle beneath me....and I'm only half crying...I can't cry properly ....and I feel like a fraud...because I know it's the second time Robin has died...and  their sympathy shouldn't be for me..... 

 it's like I've stolen someone else's grief.