Feathers and flesh

When I find crow feathers they tend to be very bedraggled, as though the bird will only give up any of its plumage when it is truly beyond repair. This is as good as I have found. They are very slim, streamlined things. Not quite as slim as pheasant feathers, but they are slimmer than those of a pigeon or buzzard.

I was thinking this, about how seldom I find a nice example of a crow feather, when I realised how seldom, if ever, I see dead crows. I suppose though that one seldom sees dead birds. Where do they go? Do they fall from nests or from the sky? Maybe they get eaten quickly? I do see pigeons and pheasants on the road. I think once I saw a dead magpie. Or I might be imagining it… do you get the same bad luck from a bereaved single magpie as from a broken mirror?

As for the mammals, we’ll, here’s my count for the journey to Hanging Houghton last time I went. Four looked to have been killed in the last day – a young fox, a teenaged badger, a rabbit and a squirrel. The squirrel was in the middle of the road will her tail flaring upright, whether by some freak of rigor mortis or the lift caused by passing cars. It seemed… significant. A marker of a death for all to see. If they even noticed. A slightly older corpse of a fox cub had been flattened into the tarmac. How flesh and bones can become two dimensional.

I bow my head to the dead animals. Register their passing. Feel a shot of grief, like the pierce of an ice shard.