Abstract Landscape Painter.  Rural Dweller.  Lover of Modernist Art and Design.

16 May

The meadow is alive with goldfinches.  These bright little birds are so tiny that they can hang onto the dandelion stems and eat the "clocks".  The flit around with their undulating flight, chattering away with their high-pitched voices.  I count ten.  Their collective noun is a "charm"  –  a suitable word on so many levels.

The scent of the may is sweet and heady.  The hawthorn hedges are thick with white, refulgent blooms.  Turning a corner, I suddenly hear a strange cacophony coming from the sky on my right.  It's all happening!  The clicking/gurgling sound is being emitted by two crows that are trying to see off a buzzard.  One flies above it, the other below.   Their commotion sets a hare running directly beneath them.   They are engaged in a display of aerial acrobatics, like two spitfires above the curve of the earth.  The large bird turns this way and that, but eventually gives up and glides off to perch on a telegraph pole in the middle of the field.

This great field has been sown with "green manure"  –  clover, bird's foot trefoil and chicory.  Also in abundance –  the ubiquitous dandelion clocks.  The buzzard, who has been sitting like Simeon the Stylite, suddenly dives into the green, resulting in the immediate rising of a little cloud of noisy and excited birds.  They form one shape, whose elements move around each other like atoms.  The bird of prey is unlucky again, and with a flap of its great wings, it returns to its post, while the little cloud chitter-chatters away, as if blown by the breeze, over the surface of the sward.

All text & images ©2018 Carol Saunderson

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