Just to record; I saw two peacock butterflies on Saturday, one feeding on aubretia and the other in the garden, and as I walked Lucy back up the road, saw a friend in the distance. We met up at our gate, she had come to tell me some sad news. There had been a retired couple recently moved into the village about three months ago, and the wife had collapsed two days ago and later died. We talked about what could be done, as they are hardly part of village happenings. I thought to write to our vicar, as surely he has some duty to care for people as well, so at sometime I shall write to him. Ire** had also some peacock butterflies in her garden and we were off about plants......
They are playing the 'bird' Sunday music on Radio 3, today it is my favourite soundscape of the curlew, and have just played a sombre piece of music by I think Benjamin Britten - Curlew River, not my favourite.
The curlew is the sound of the moor, the dried heathers its home for a time and as this noisy raucous springtime breaks out into bird song and spring blossoms, the blackthorns showing their finery and the promise of a summer filled with flowers, we should rejoice. Not be tied up in negativity.
I can remember the tiny flow of ten little fluffy grouse wandering across the lane on Wheeldale moor with their anxious mother. There is something so outrageous that these tiny vulnerable creatures would grow up to be the target of shooters on the moor, hiding in their fortress like grouse butts
Ted Hughes poem comes to mind; and a favourite flower comes to mind, the harebell that nods in the wind over the moor, must look up its story in Grigson.
The curlew is the sound of the moor, the dried heathers its home for a time and as this noisy raucous springtime breaks out into bird song and spring blossoms, the blackthorns showing their finery and the promise of a summer filled with flowers, we should rejoice. Not be tied up in negativity.
I can remember the tiny flow of ten little fluffy grouse wandering across the lane on Wheeldale moor with their anxious mother. There is something so outrageous that these tiny vulnerable creatures would grow up to be the target of shooters on the moor, hiding in their fortress like grouse butts
Ted Hughes poem comes to mind; and a favourite flower comes to mind, the harebell that nods in the wind over the moor, must look up its story in Grigson.
Grouse-Butts by Ted Hughes
Where all the lines embrace and lie down,
Roofless hovels of turf, tapped by harebells,
Weather humbler.
In a world bare of men
They are soothing as ruins
Where the stones roam again free.
But inside each one, under sods, nests
Of spent cartridge-cases
Are acrid with life.
Those dead-looking fumaroles are forts.
Monkish cells, communal, strung-out, solitary,
The front line emplacements of a war nearly religious--
Dedicated to the worship
Of costly, beautiful guns.
A religion too arcane
For the grouse who grew up to trust their kingdom
And its practical landmarks.
I have never read that poem before but I like it a lot. In my wanderings west of Sheffield, I have often come across grouse butts - just like the ones to which Ted Hughes alludes. I am afraid I cannot get my head around what pleasure is to be found in blasting startled grouse out of the skies.
ReplyDeleteI think it comes under the term 'sport', like the many hundreds of thousand pheasants who are shot daily, I hear the gunfire most days round here. Hughes gets it right about those butts being like forts,, when you see them on the moor Hadrian's Wall springs to mind.
ReplyDelete