Enchantment …

Birds enchant me. Their habits, their calls, their look. It always sparks my imagination, and it is not long before they have a name and personality all of their own. You have Kind Charles the Stonechat, or Mavrick and Goose, the Cape Sparrows and of course, Leeroy the Afrochook and Maurice the Magnificent (said with a French accent and lots of hand signals).

Every morning while I sit quietly writing my morning pages and thinking and planning the day ahead, the heartbeat of Whyteleaf Cottage begins. The cooing of the doves in the trees overhead. Sometimes distant and gentle sometimes closer to home and more incessant, desperate even. But always the minutes during the active sunrise all is quite just to begin again – the repetitive call of the doves settle over the garden like a gentle anchor. A steady rhythm holding the world in place for the day ahead.

the antithesis of this is the chirping of the sparrows as they go about their chattering. Short little bursts of information – more of a business memo than a long explanation. The two resident sparrows I call Mavrick and Goose. In the early stages of our relationship, I opened the veranda doors on morning and the next thing, in perfect formation, in flew M and G. A tight squadron who burst through the open doorway, wings cutting the air with sharp precision. They moved as one—banking, dipping, and weaving in perfect harmony—like fighter pilots on a low sweep, each bird instinctively holding its line, adjusting in a blink, turning chaos into choreography. After a few mornings of harmony, A N Other lady sparrow venturesd into the room and disturbed the equilibrium

to be continued …