Monday, June 15, 2015

Of light and floating things...

We awoke to the delightful sounds of baby birds being fed by their parents.

Mesange charbonniere

Raising the shutters revealed a pair of baby Mesange Charbonniere.  They seem to be closely related to what would call Chickadees in the US.  Their parents were busy finding tasty bugs to eat in the Dove Plum tree that's growing not three meters from out back window.

All day I pointed my camera lens toward the Dove Plum.  All day "click click click" went the shutter.  Hungry babies.  Parents hunting.  Babies fed.  Peaceable things, these.

Our courtyard is filled with birds this time of year.  We have at least one pair of nesting doves and one pair of Merle, or what one might call Blackbirds in the UK.  There are several pigeon families as well as these cute little Mesange Charbonniere.

Mesange charbonniere

Jude and I agreed that the day had been a wonderful one.

The next morning we awoke to the sounds of very agitated Mesange Charbonniere.  Raising the shutters we looked on a scene of death and destruction.  A Geai des Chenes was on the hunt.

It was terrible to watch the efficiency with which the bird hunted.  The Geai des Chenes is closely related to Jays in the US.  Unlike the Jays we used to see the French version is lethal.  Little bits of fluff and feather floated through the air.  Terrible strings of meat and gut were unstrung.  Tiny legs and claws soon hung limp in a laurel tree.

On a human level, the two days which started in beauty and grace but later ended in dismembered white and dripping red is the perfect metaphor for what's happening around me.

Geai des Chenes

It is all too easy for me to compare the cute little birds being cared for by their parents with the feelings words can bring when someone says you are regarded and things will be shared.  Someone else says to you is given this very important future task.  There is safety and comfort sometimes in words.  Particularly in important words.

Death came both figuratively and in reality.  The aftermath of floating downy feathers are beautiful words too soon pulled from the body of beautiful truth.  Lies and half lies, darker truths and controlling demands are the beak of destruction.  Words that do not lead to proper action is death of a terrible and disturbing kind.

Those supposedly close, those who uttered such fine words are instantly seen as false and shallow.  They are shown to be simple managers of their own self interests.  Greed and gain, responsibility and authority lay on different bed rock than their words described.  Like a Geai des Chenes on the hunt the effect is swift, brutal, and efficient.

Geai des Chenes

Those who can and could say, don't.  Those who know and have known for a long time remain silent.  Their claim that all one needed to do was to ask so as to know what was really meant, what was really the truth use tightfisted, thuggish ways of avoiding what they have done to their own family.  Their approach only works if you know the questions to be asked and it is very well understood that you cannot know nor could ever imagine the right questions to ask.  Thereby, those who have motive and opportunity gain.  Those who were said to be included, those who were to shoulder serious responsibilities won't.

It is in the deep and very nature of those involved that their lives unfold as they do, is it not?  There is no mystery how this happens.  The only mystery is why they are believed for as long as they are.  For that I must bear full responsibility.  For all the rest, the drama they created is their's to live and deal with.

The Geai des Chenes has so far destroyed two families of Mesange Charbonniere.  The first attack took place in full sun.  The second on a cold and rainy day.  The cute little birds keep trying to bring to adulthood a brood of chicks.  Their optimism is sometimes horrible to consider.  The attacks were 30 days apart.

Geai des Chenes

We see that a third family of Mesange Charbonniere are in the nest.  Will they survive?  By the looks of the middle of the courtyard where Pigeon feathers are spread all about after yesterday's attack by a crow or perhaps a cat we have our doubts.

It's been a brutal Spring.

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