A delight and a devastation of dunnocks

This happened some weeks back but, for reasons of scheduling my little films on YouTube and my habit of writing too much on here, the tale is told somewhat after the fact.

The dunnocks had been making themselves more visible from the start of February and by the second week of the month were singing.

Even when I didn't see Son of Bob, I'd see the dunnocks.

One day - when I also watched Son of Bob chasing Tiny around the garden, I saw a great deal of the dunnocks.

I remember during the pandemic that one little bird would come close to me on the patio when I sat outside to read. A dunnock, though I didn't know that at the time. He or she pecked around my feet and I felt touched by the bird's presence.

On this February day, I startled one from close to my feet - you'll see at the end of the video. The bird was all puffed up and scuttling across the ground. I was filming and at the time I wasn't sure what happened, but, in the film, it looks as though another dunnock chased the sick or injured one away. I was concerned, but while the bird had only run from me, she or he had seemed to fly off at the end.

Later in the day, at the same place, Just under the perch, where, and this breaks your heart, a dunnock was softly singing (I wondered why he was so quiet), I found the corpse. The body was on the path, and I had passed it, been squatting next to it when putting out food and then filming Bobbit, who had startled me and I had stepped back. Did I tread on a brave bird, pecking around my feet? The dunnocks often eat on the ground here. It was possible. I looked at the body and the head seemed compressed... but I figured that my 60+kg would have done more damage than that. Maybe it was the cat. I feel complicit in that - as the cat eats the food I leave out for the fox, which is just a feet yards up the path. I have encouraged the cat's presence. Then again, maybe it was the sick dunnock, who was too weak to escape the cat or who simply died? I don't know. But it left me saddened and also reinforced the entanglement of things. Responsibility is like an expanding net.

Anyway, much of this video is a delight of dunnocks... but it ends with the devastation.