The phenomenology of connection

This came about as a result of the Bird in yesterday's post... telling me I needed to sit with feelings. I went to Pitsford looking for a tree. I found this sycamore by following a mammal track between the path and the shore.

I sat under it and was surrounded by birdsong. Coal, great and blue tits, blackbirds and blackcaps, robin, wren and chiffchaff, crow and jackdaw, greenfinch and goldfinch, greylag and canada geese, moorhens, ducks... and kingfishers. Buzzards wheeled overhead.

While I was there, the tree said, this is the phenomenology of connection.

I was what I was experiencing with my senses and so I was letting the wakeful world in. Sounds and sights, touch and smell. I didn't taste anything.

I noticed the contact discourse between great tits which is more conversational, it seems, than the contact between blue and long-tailed tits. They kept up a gentle dialogue - but raised the volume when the geese were loud.

I noticed a blackbird seemingly mimicking the chiffchaff.

I noticed fresh badger prints in the mud among the muntjac's trails.

Sit for long enough, and alarm calls stop. The birds still see you and don't necessarily come close, but they get on with life.

One did come close. A blue tit bathed ten feet away from me - much flapping and splashing before flying into the blackthorn to dry off with more flapping and preening.

I found it wonderful.

Then I followed the mammal track because I could hear the kingfishers. I was sure there were two, keeping contact with each other. Finally, I saw one.

I sat still and saw the bird twice more - once flying past and once facing me, his orange-bronze breast like a small flame across the water.

By the way, I showed this photo to my photographic exemplar, Dave Jackson, and by return email he sent me this.

Despite my comparative failure in the image capturing stakes, it was a magical afternoon.

My noticing must have lost potency as when I was trying to photograph the out-of-focus robin in the left foreground, I didn't even see the sun-bathing rabbit!