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Curling up with a book - 12 birds to save your life by Charlie Corbett
I was drawn to this book last year when I saw the beautiful cover on the shelf in our new library. I found a second hand copy online and immediately dipped into it when it arrived. Then it got buried under a pile of stuff (literally and metaphorically).
I took this book with me when I went to Germany at Easter and I read the first chapter on the plane. Charlie writes about pulling himself up from the depths of despair when his Mum died by lying on a hill side in the rain listening to the skylarks. He found that immersing himself in nature and reconnecting with the land and the wildlife of his childhood helped him to process his grief and heal his heart.
As I read about the Skylarks I realised I couldn't think of a time I had heard them as they are only found in vast open land and definitely nowhere concreted, like the city where we live. On my first morning in Germany I took a solo walk down to the riverside in Bayersdorf and took in the sunshine, stillness and birdsong. The Merlin app on my phone for identifying birds revealed the company of a black bird, green woodpecker, stork and chiff chaff. I ambled around enjoying the quiet and reconnecting with nature myself just as Charlie had. I was walking along a chalky pathway through a field when a tractor approached. I could see it was kicking up a massive dust cloud so I stepped several feet off the path on to the field to get out of the way. I waited a few minutes for the dust to resettle and in that moment of hush after the thunderous tractor sounds I heard a new birdsong. Unfamiliar to me, I opened Merlin and it immediately identified ''Skylark''. I couldn't see any birds nearby but the trilling continued for about 20 seconds. What a moment! Skylarks are one of few birds that ''sing on the wing'' and you may never spot them singing from the sky.
I'm on chapter two now, ''Wren''. A bitter sweet reminder of one of the lovely birds I heard often in the woods at the hospice. |
