The Ornithologist

Great Grey Shrike.Lanius excubitor.Inhabits open areas with scattered trees and bushes. Tail in continual motion while perched, usually in a circular pattern. Flight undulating and low, swooping upwards to perch. Regularly hovers. Prey is impaled upon thorns to form “larder”. Voice harsh, chattering cry, all shrikes sounding similar.



Like a secret agent, always drawn back into the game,

I hide myself, binoculars poised,

Reconnoitring the terrain.

The treetops know me for a harmless impostor,

A wingless creature without guile.

I dream that the objects of my attention

May sometimes notice my smile.

What casual revelations may come to pass?

Some figment of my own strangeness

Comes into focus in the glass.


Grasshopper Warbler .Locustella naevia. Voice: song distinctive, always uttered from dense vegetation, said to resemble a fisherman’s reel. Very high pitched and carries for long distance ;movement of the bird’s head appearing to later the location of the bird.


Sky-skaters, cutting figures in the mind!

Distant heralds, what riddles do you drop from your beaks?

Carefully I set my snares for life.

The flying dinosaurs nest in my loneliness.

Perhaps I only seek some hints for living

From those lighter and braver than men.

My place is with the ostrich and the dodo.

I envy the blackness of the crow.

Beauty is small consolation

For a lifetime of tedium and mistakes.


The birds explode from undifferentiated chaos,

Assuming multifarious guises

To baffle the world.

I recite their names like passwords to heaven,

Spells to cleanse the blood.

Shaman plumed for action,

I humble myself to the drum,

Stealing up on stray souls,

Inveigling them into my sack.


I am the necessary observer,

Born to the margins,

Trained in vigil.

I tunnel through the seasons,

Killing myself with thought.

These acts of contemplation are my passage

Through countries of the mind.

I taste the rain for memories;

Time has drenched me to the bone.

I have no understanding but the wind.


Tengmalm’s Owl. Aegolius funereus. Flight wavers from side to side rather than undulating. Voice: series of whistling notes said to resemble the sound of dripping water.


Human life is heavy,

Staggering among the stones.

All my life I have longed for lightness and flight.

The wren-king beats the eagle to the crown.


I skulk in hedgerows, hover over farms,

Reeling off the queer green world;

I drill through the wind with my beak.


Sound from silence. Silence from sound.

Call-signs tease the air into filigree

Or shock it with brute hunger.

Earth and sky stare each other out

Or play peekaboo.

My world shivers like a tuning-fork.


Reed bunting. Emberiza schoeniclus. Rarely high up in vegetation, preferring to cling to stems of reeds, willows etc, close to ground. Semi-gregarious in winter months, all-male parties often forming in early spring. Voice: monotonous unmusical song, usually of all four notes, can be rendered as “burp burp burp pardon”.


The swan’s white shadow

Blinds me into submission.


Petrels soar before the storm,

And cakewalk over the clapping waves;

Awestruck bridesmaids, they gather the trains of ships.


A cormorant plunges

And fishes up the moon in its beak.


A heron stands, mesmerised, in shallows,

Gawky frowning professor

Poring over the water’s scroll.


Ravens and crows pick over my corpse,

Swinging from a lightning-oak’s bough.

My eyes are gone, but still I see

The emptiness that sees through me.


As if waiting for the Second Coming,

I sit in expectation of some rara avis,

A miracle to make good my witness.


Jack Snipe. Lymnocryptes minimus. Very difficult to flush, often not rising until almost trodden upon. Has drumming display flight, with noise said to resemble galloping horse.


First a door, then a key to turn.

How should I know

If my positions are but poses?

And is there any completion,

Even in death?


All I want is a way of walking

To trust in, even if I occasionally fall,

And somewhere to head for, hoping for the best.

(Stupidly, I envy

That starling there, flying to its nest).


Can I make a pact with the earth

To share our secrets?

I walk like a dipper on the streambed.


I think of this country and the world that is changing...

What shall I say to the wind?

That human hearts will never have the courage to be free?

That misery has no end?


Another year will pass, another chance of happiness.

I shall still be prowling under wet branches,

Mutely lifting the glasses in homage,

Assembling the jigsaw as best I can.

Earth-astronomer, dying like the stars I scrutinize,

I know all this flamboyant pullulation

Is fragile as a wren’s skull.

Ravenous questions, like the begging mouths of chicks,

Shriek inside me, gaping at the sky for succour.


Capercaillie.Tetrao urogallus. Feathers of neck and throat can be raised to produce whiskered effect. Rather shy and secretive. Flight rapid and direct, periods of wingbeats interspersed with glides on downcurved wings. Voice: wide variety of calls ,variously likened to drawing of cork from bottle, clearing throat and loud rattle.