Birdwatching

On Christmas Eve 1995, just a few days after my son Matthew had died, a robin landed in our garden, in the face of our (then) three cats, and numerous visiting felines, a potential war zone which hadn’t done much to encourage feathered friends over the years.
We called it Matt, as a tribute to a bird-loving son, and of course, in our grief, we acknowledged this as a sign that he’d come back to say he was free and happy – well, mothers are excused such potty notions at such times. Anyway, its arrival prompted the old man to dash off to the nearest garden centre for a bird table, rather than it feed off the floor with all those killer cats around waiting to pounce.
He visited daily, and I became quite besotted with the little creature for a couple of weeks. And then disaster struck. I was looking after grandson Jacob, then around six months old, and he was sleeping on the sofa when the phone rang. It was my niece, Cindy, calling with a buck-me-up chat. Suddenly, the cat flap rattled, and in darted the recently departed Annie, with, you’ve guessed it, the robin in her mouth.
I shrieked : "Annie’s got Matthew!", dropped the phone, Jacob woke up howling, Cindy was trembling at the other end of the line thinking either the baby had fallen off the sofa or Auntie Lou had witnessed a vision, and I was in hysterics on the stairs, trying to prise the bird from the jaws of hell – to no avail. The purpose of this little tale is to say that ever since then, we’ve never tempted birds into our garden, though we once saw a fox with a blackbird in its mouth, but that was the bird’s fault. It should have been in bed instead of nicking the night-time fox food.
But times change. Annie croaked a few weeks ago and took her 19-year-old creaking bones to that pilchard palace in the sky, and our garden has become, for the first time in nearly 40 years, a cat-free zone. It appears those wily old birds know this. Because they’ve come a’flocking. And, from the warmth and comfort of that wifely know-your-place – between the kitchen sink and the cooker – I’ve become a bit of a twitcher.
Okay, our back yard isn’t exactly on the migratory path between the Russian Steppes and the Sahara Desert, but I’m a very dedicated voyeur, and for all the world could be sitting in a remote hide, anorak, camera and binoculars in place, watching out for lesser-spotted whatevers. The fact that I don’t know a pied wagtail from a snow bunting is beside the point. The first two robins pecking at the proffered pastry are the stuff soppy old saddos like me are made of.
They’ve been followed by a bevvy of blackbirds, a virtual regiment of sparrows, a pair of thrushes, one Jenny wren, a couple of fat wood pigeons, and a noisy, belligerent scary magpie which I always salute, shout a loony : "Good morning, general" – just to be on the safe side – before nipping out in my nightie to chase him off.
I spend precious time when I could be doing something useful like cleaning the light switches or rustling up an imaginative soup, dreaming up nourishing, suet-and-dripping filled dishes for what are, on observation, a load of wimps and bullies of the bird world. In the current climate of ice and frost, who’s the dolt out there at 7 am, defrosting various bird baths and watering holes so that they can at least have a bath and a drink?
Their various characteristics are a constant source of amusement, concern, entertainment. Who needs murderous cats? And it certainly beats daytime telly.
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