September

a murmured review

An untouched photograph of Starlings murmuring over Lough Ennell, by James Crombie

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Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.

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Each September I join the migration. As the Geese leave their Arctic shores and return carrying the dawn, I leave the shores of constant doing and return to myself carrying the wounds of Summer. The fall makes permissible my proclivity to cocoon, to burrow into book and memory and the long list of things demanding to be felt. To be with oneself is patient, painful and ancient work; easily neglected, oft overlooked. I turned 40 at the weekend. An arbitrary way marker, essentially, and yet a point of some potency as I am now older than my mother lived to be. Naturally, a review insisted itself be conducted. It came as a serpent wearing a bowler hat, who led me, unbidden, winding through not only the last four decades as I know them but through the years as they’d have appeared on alternate paths. A dendritic patchwork of unlived lives, but regardless of route each path moved with the same undulation of existence. Seed became mouse became soil became grass became rabbit who met car and became Crow. Life arched her back towards Death in ecstatic union, and their love propelled the wheel upon which this all turns. Being raised, in part, by a ghost made the threads which bind life, love and Death all the more clear to see.

We’d been home not half an hour when a knock at the door announced the arrival of a Pigeon who a neighbour of ours had picked up after the Bird had flown into her repeatedly. The woman’s dogs were becoming riled, so she held the Pigeon and brought her to us. David put her in the aviary while I got her food and water, neither of which she appeared to have seen in days. I called the wildlife coordinator at the rescue centre (who is one of my dearest friends) and explained the situation while sending her a video of our newest feathered friend. It transpired that Cordelia (the Pigeon)—who has feathered ankles and feet, and is exceptionally beautiful—is a ‘fancy’ Pigeon, and so therefore most likely a pet who had either escaped or been abandoned, and who was not a candidate to be taken in by a wildlife rescue centre. Neighbours have rallied and posts have been placed on social media far and wide in the hopes of finding her people, if indeed she has any, but for the interim, Cords lives with us. I fell headfirst into a rabbit hole of how best to care for a fancy Pigeon, and so Cordelia now has various roosts and platforms, a bath, two foraging mats, a soft toy, some bells, a nest and, her favourite, a large mirror. Pigeons can self-recognise and apparently mirrors are like television for them, so she spends much of her time settled in her nest, gazing at her own reflection. To be fair, if I were as beautiful as she, I’d probably do the same. Watching her, though, as I play soft classical music underneath the sounds of Pigeons vocalising on YouTube, I feel a bone-deep ache at the prospect of her never again feeling the open sky beneath her seraphic wings. I struggle to make peace with the bind that her wellbeing and safety might not be compatible with her freedom. Perhaps because my own wellbeing and safety might not be compatible with my freedom.¹

Awareness is a flock of Starlings moving in ways not perceivably logical, driven by something unseen. Mine surges towards the weeping silver birches whose lament I feel as my own, before it turns and dominos through time towards a childhood memory of watching in horror as a tadpole ate one of its siblings. But the shotgun blast of the modern world sees the murmuration dissipate into factions, awareness fracturing into split attentions darting in each direction. What lovingly joins the grief of trees can easily turn predatory, what leads me by the hand to the temple of nature can also hold me prisoner in the dungeon of fear and judgment. Sometimes I feel as though I am in possession of something equally as dangerous as it is miraculous, and so I attempt to train my flock by repeatedly lifting the feather-lightweight of allowing something dear to me to hold my full attention. Birds, my beloved, the dying process, the deep and weighty topic of Death and what its existence means for us individually, collectively and cosmically, each of these magnetise the flock of my awareness and form a central axis around which it may dance as a fluid whole.

The shotgun blast of my mother’s Death saw our family spook and fracture, and I was left missing the grounded and attuned presence of an adult that I so needed as the shockwaves of her departure swelled. It has been meaningful, then, to step into the role of that very person in my adulthood—grounded, attuned, present in equal measure to intensity and mystery, as willing to welcome pain, grief, and fear at my table as I am love, beauty, and awe. The grief that had migrated from branch to branch of the family tree may well have met its match in me.

The fractal nature of murmuration reveals itself within the single Starling—each a world of shifting and fluid complexity driven by some untraceable wisdom. In her untimely departure, my mother pressed into my palm a lens, a way of seeing that would take me many years to recognise as the gift it was. And when I joined and then passed her in age, we met briefly, eye to eye, and I was finally able to thank her.

Watching Cordelia in her closed loop of witnessing herself witnessing herself, I see the spirals of time—my mother and I, the same age, finally meeting one another, and the three-year-old, adrift, being found and met by her very self as the adult that she was in need of. Child became woman became mother became soil became ghost who met daughter and became equal.

Yours in aimless flight…

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And for anyone called to explore their relationship with mortality more deeply, you can:

Sweet Cordelia, blissing out while having a shower

1. Joyously, after no one came forward to claim Cordelia and I spent phone call after phone call going round in circles, I spoke with a woman at the National Pigeon Association. After hearing me describe Cords’ behaviour and characteristics, she suggested with some certainty that Cordelia is in fact the lovechild of a lost fancy or racing pigeon, and a wild feral pigeon—an occurrence which is apparently happening more and more. Who knew. She suggested we release her a few miles from where she was found and we “see what happens”—a prospect which, to me, felt rather daunting and so I asked whether releasing her in the grounds of an animal sanctuary farm, which cares for rescued rabbits, and chickens and which has been made home by a group of savvy feral pigeon who’ve realised they’re extremely well fed there, could work instead. Charlie, the lady from the National Pigeon Association said this was “the perfect solution”. Luckily for Cordelia, I volunteer at such an animal sanctuary, and so tomorrow she will be released into ‘Bunny Park’, an area home to fifteen rabbits, a very elderly turkey, two rescue chickens (one of whom is Gloria) and a flock of feral pigeons. She will be well fed, and well watched over by the fiercely dedicated staff there and, most of all, she will be free. God speed, heavenly Bird.