Our annual starlings have vacated for
more commodious lodgings in the
neighbour roof, evicting the
sparrows who now noisily inhabit the
servants’ quarters under the tiles,
above the guttering, though they
don’t seem to mind.
Meanwhile, another starling—an
offspring perhaps, drawn back by the
smell of struggle, warm worms and
fledging—takes up the vacant tenancy,
clueless initially, rummaging through
last year’s squalor, haphazardly
filching the lost property of the garden: a
gull’s quill, the underdown from
pigeons, a piece of greenery
too long to fit and left
hanging from the gutter.
But somehow it works, a female
approves the refurbishment,
moves in, mates, lays, hatches, and they
ferociously feed some maw I
can hear but cannot see, while
over us all, a
woodpigeon flaps
like laundry.