MONDAY 11th FEBRUARY 2013

Newbridge, Smestow Valley

10.15 to 10.45am, cold, damp, melting snow.

Aerial pair bring warmth to a cold day

The back's playing up a bit, so best I can muster today is a slow, slushy shuffle to the paper shop to dissect Man City's dire performance at Southampton (for Kevin, the result tops even last month's brace of Barn Owls during Foot It).  That sorted, it's back down the sloping road looking across the valley towards the Stockwell End/Tettenhall ridge trees, the top of St.Michael's Church just showing, so stop for a moment, breathe in the cold air, have a look around.  Somewhere near the playingfield Magpies are sounding off, two Jackdaws chatter their way busily low and fast towards the main road, and a Crow floats up on to a chimney pot, suddenly a corvid cornucopia. Pavements treacherous, I set off again, Richard III-style,  gingerly in the middle of the road, glance up to the left and there, together on a corner house TV aerial . . . no bins, so check again, a pair of Rooks, swaying gently against the cold wind from the north, leg feathers ruffled as they turn on the narrow metal, close together, dark against the dull sky, one gently grooming its partner's neck, then carefully shifting positions, each rubbing its white-based bill up and down against the inside of the iced rungs to send a thin shower of snow on to the roof below.  These are the birds of the massed black flocks that move slowly, lifting and falling as the light fades, across the winter wastes of rural Britain, gathering at dusk in their thousands over dark fringe woodlands that are their centuries-old roosts.  These are the birds that nest communally and noisily in village copses across the land, their coarse deep calls as symbolic of  country life as the peal of church bells.  Here in a Wolverhampton street on this cold morning there are just two, gently and quietly reinforcing the bond between them, getting ready to join other pairs that as spring approaches will soon be tail-fanning, bowing and calling to each other at their rough stick nests, chase-flying across playingfields and foraging near to city housing estates.  Years ago you could hear their calls in March in church trees at the bottom of Broad Street near the canal and ring road.  Those birds are long gone, but ours are still with us.  We should cherish them.   


(PS.  Wonderful Blackcap picture!  Where are the fairies?)