Meadowland
A naturalistic exploration of English meadows, their ecology, history, and cultural significance.
The collective noun for buzzards is, fittingly I feel, ‘a wake’.
There is nothing so innocent as a newborn lamb; the scion of the sheep was not appropriated as the Christian symbol for Jesus for nothing. The lamb of God.
When the first gunsmiths needed a name for a small firearm they settled on the falconry term for a male sparrowhawk. A musket.
To stand alone in a field in England and listen to the morning chorus of the birds is to remember why life is precious. I am
I suddenly realize that the swifts have gone. No fanfare. Just a prestidigitator’s trick, a disappearance into the morning’s mist. Inside I sigh a little. One of life’s allotment of summers is over.