I Like Birds
I like that the children think my favourite bird is a seagull,
Because I told them once I liked how they say, ‘seagell’.
But my favourite now is a long-tailed tit.
One landed on the rose bush, outside our sitting room window.
I thought it was a fledgling.
It’s too early, but how can any grown bird be that small and fluffy?
I like how Benny thought the heron we saw flying yesterday, was flying backwards.
Because its legs, stuck out behind it, looked like the long neck of a goose.
I like that he now knows there are geese nearby.
When he hears their honk.
I like that most days I see a red kite.
Flying far off or sitting in the field at the bottom of the garden.
And then once in a while I startle one from a tree as I approach,
And when it flies off I remember how awesomely big they are.
I like when I’m out walking and I stop to watch the nuthatches
Run up and down the trees that flank the old railway line.
And I can hear the hammer of a woodpecker
From somewhere in the valley.
And I like when our willow tree has a visit
From the greater spotted kind.
As it hops up and down the mossy trunk.
But it never hammers there.
I like seeing the blue-tits and the great-tits and the coal-tits,
And the goldfinches, with their little red bonnets on.
And the song thrushes and the collared doves.
I like that maybe that was a yellow hammer.
I like the blackbirds. Especially the males, for how smart they look.
But they are pushy with the little birds. They look genteel but they’re not.
I like the pushy starlings too. And their green rainbow streaks.
I hardly ever see a magpie, they don’t visit our garden.
I like the pairs of male pheasants that strut about our lawn;
Stupid and beautiful.
I like the gangs of sparrows that crowd the hedges outside our patio doors.
Constantly chattering and flitting to the hanging feeder.
They won’t land on the window feeder like the blue tits, robins and starlings do.
But they happily hop around underneath collecting their crumbs.
I like when they bathe in the rainwater, collected in the dips of the old drain cover.
And that they sleep under our roof.
And I like that the coo coo of the wood pigeons, once the sound of my childhood home,
Is now the sound my children know.
Sam Haines