I popped the phone into my dressing gown pocket and switched off the lights to go upstairs. All the furniture in the room was visible and outside a silver light was filling one quarter of the sky: the full moon behind lacey clouds. My phone took a few minutes off alarm clock duty to let me focus on what I saw – through a glass darkly – what I saw with my inward eye was more than my external eye in the camera could record. It was worth remembering and, I hope, worth sharing.
It was i July last year that I met this sparrowhawk on our city street. I guess it was a young bird, as the intruding magpie seemed to flummox him until I came on the scene. Hawk and prey into the brambles, magpie off to scavenge elsewhere. And I into town.
In the year since then, disaster befell the hawk. About 30 metres from this picture, taken by the back gate of a plumber’s merchant’s warehouse, the hawk was found dead by the showroom door, its breast ripped apart by another predator.
We thought it most likely he had swooped down on another little bird and hit the plate glass window at speed, breaking his neck. A handful of neighbours at least mourned his passing.
Two days ago a partly dismembered collared dove lay on the pavement not far from the original encounter. As long as a certain neighbour continues to feed the birds so generously, I think we can say we have our sparrowhawk back!
 willturnstoneSilence can be a moment of revelation, writes Eddie Gilmore of the London Irish chaplaincy. Here’s a paragraph from his reflection, where a hike across Wales opened that possibility to him. As ever, the whole article is worth reflecting upon, but here’s that taster. When I was fourteen I was on a school trip to North Wales and we were hiking one day across the high and remote moorland when the guide asked us to stop dead still and to listen. Having grown up in a city, and in a house where my sister liked to have Radio 1 playing all the time, and where the TV was usually on non-stop, it was probably the first time I had heard that sound of silence. And what an amazing sound it was. It lasted just a few seconds before some of the others started giggling but it was a little moment of revelation for me. What revelation could we receive if we stopped the noise for a few minutes? That said, I used to find silence following a noisy lawnmower around some extensive grounds, part of my mind concentrating on the machine and the grass, the rest, eventually turning to silence.There are many entries to the bliss of solitude. |
My friend Frog shared these wintry photos, I found them so calming that I’m passing them on to any reader feeling festivally frazzled!
Will Turnstone 