Blue tit sequences

I should have put these in that long post a few days ago. In fact, these images are all earlier - as you can tell from the state of the vegetation.

Now, spring is great and, as I have shown with the pictures, the blossoms and sunshine bring great joy. BUT it's now much harder to see the birds as they are hidden by the abundant leaves!

I will miss the pictures of foraging and the chance to see birds "fall" into flight.

I guess I will have to focus on the plant world more.

On which subject, Craig Holdrege's Thinking Like a Plant is absolutely BRILLIANT. He is inspired by Goethe, whose name has come up a few times in this blog, and what he advocates seems very much aligned to the way of thinking I experience when sitting with trees. I heartily recommend it.

Indeed, today I sat with the two oaks I named Huginn and Muninn. I had a strong sense of the importance of using imagination and intuition as well as "normal" reasoned thinking when considering the ides that interest me. While I was there, I did some filming for a talk I will give (in fact, will have given, by the time this is posted) on conversations with trees, so I was not in the best frame of mind for a conversation.

Even so, I noticed that while the blue tits were on high alert when I arrived, and for a few minutes once I had sat down, after a while, they returned to their normal activities. The goldfinches returned and around me I could hear blackbirds, wrens and pheasants. Even when I stood up to leave, the birds were not anxious. They had come to regard me, for whatever reason, as benign.

I sat under the higher tree, who is less far developed in terms of leafing out. Where I sat, there were raptor pellets. I see buzzards, kestrels and sparrowhawks around here. There will be owls too. I don't know whose roost it is, but given the size and the fur in the pellets, I think owl or kestrel. Though I usually see kestrels perch in a high vantage point, and the roost here was under the canopy.

I lay back and looked up. I was part of the place. I was rooted.

When I got up to leave, I was astonished to realise that I had been there for three quarters of an hour!