I was given a book for my birthday the like of which I’d never seen before. The author, Alex Preston, a bird enthusiast since childhood, has set out to find literary references to 22 birds, many of which you might see on Cowbar. A few have made it into our ‘species’ pages with many more to come! Though there’s plenty of admiration for the species he has chosen, it’s much more of a collection of attempts by poets and authors to describe characteristics, not always complimentary, that are particular to any one bird.
We often see on Cowbar ‘the’ kestrel, for example, assuming it’s always the same one, and some authors admire its hover, some disdain its “unruliness” and Billy Casper in ’A Kestrel for a Knave’ says of its dive, “you ought to have seen it, mister, it wa’ smashing’.
“Like a waterfall in the sky” – the song of which bird do you think that describes? Richard Jeffries was obsessed with the skylark and it’s a song that often stops us on Cowbar, too. In the relevant chapter, it’s clear that the Romantic poets thought the bird quite special – Shelley says it’s “from Heaven, or near it”. Isaac Rosenberg found comfort in the darkness of WWI trench warfare – coming back across no-man’s-land, he was inspired to write ‘Returning, We Hear the Larks’ in which he described their song as “music showering our upturned list’ning faces”.
Of the 22 listed, we’ve seen at least 12 but I don’t hold out much hope for catching sight of a nightingale or a snow goose. We have seen barn owls, clouds of goldfinches feasting on the thistle heads in the autumn and heard more often than seen curlews – all beautifully illustrated in the book by Neil Gower. We’ve definitely seen more than one gull on Cowbar. Mary Oliver and her partner cared for an injured gull on Rhode Island, a long way from Cowbar, and some of her resultant poetry could almost be a motto for what we do on Cowbar:
“I love this world, even in its hard places.
A bird too must love this world,
Even in its hard places.
So, even if the effort may come to nothing,
You have to do something.”
For those of you who have a fondness for those creatures that flap, glide, dart, hover, swoop, caw and sing above us and want to know about Mozart’s starling, I highly recommend ‘As Kingfishers Catch Fire’ by Alex Preston with excellent illustrations by Neil Gower.
As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Alex Preston | Hachette UK (littlebrown.co.uk)
Mick