Easterlies, decaying. Overnight rain. Early morning mist, lingering.
Chaffinches scattering from the gravel track to the cliff-top wood. Redwings
seep out of the hawthorns and oak — some landing, some leaving. Other thrushes
(blackbird and song) call quietly, seemingly several to each bush.
Gravel becomes mud. Light becomes shade.
In the heart of the wood is a strand of sycamores. I stand underneath,
disturbing nothing, becoming like an adjunct trunk. In the heart of the
sycamore, three goldcrests — six grams of feather, bone and muscle — flit about
the canopy, foraging invisible insects from the undersides of rusting leaves.
Migrants too. From, not just the woods of Belgium and the deep pines of
Scandinavia, but from beyond the Danube, the Vistula, perhaps the Volga too? We
are still
working out from how far east our goldcrests can migrate in winter. An advance at
least on the often repeated old folk-tales, that could only explain their
crossings of the North Sea by them riding on the backs of short-eared owls and
woodcocks.
The tree welcomes them, wherever they’re from. Food and shelter before the
leaves are stripped back by November gales and they move on, once more, driven
by the need for food and shelter. The mist has burnt off and the sky is deep
autumn blue. The thrushes vanish. Skylarks head over, high, in singles. Flocks
of goldfinch determinedly bounce south along the cliff-top. The world keeps
turning. A leaf falls from the sycamore. The goldcrests keep flitting.
Stephen Rutt 