THE YEAR TURNS, THE WORLD TURNS

As I woke this morning I heard a buzzard mew from the tree outside the window. So August is here. The rooks have left the rookery for the open fields and the buzzard feels unpestered enough to return.

When we came here first a pair of buzzards were building in an ash tree at the top of the garden and would often sit on the fallen dead tree at the far end. Then rooks arrived and set up a rookery just over the wall next door.

The buzzards were driven away.

So the year turns - the rooks begin after Christmas fetching sticks for nests and generally making a raucous din. The volume is turned up as the young arrive until, suddenly, they fledge and leave the rookery.

Mornings become quiet, the cacophony stilled.

After the garden being stuffed with birdsong,

summer and moulting bring a deadness to the

place. Then the swallows start to whirl around chattering at one another and the horde of young bluetits twitter on the peanut feeder. (The squirrel has managed to rip apart a second one!)

The grass is cut (I got out the strimmer yesterday!) and tiny frogs can be seen skipping about near the pond. Where the frogs are the heron cannot be far behind.

The garden moves on through the summer and sweat and effort try to tame its determination to submerge all in long grass and tangles of bindweed and goosegrass.

Then the swallows will leave, the finches flock and the coming of winter be announced by the arrival of the redwings and fieldfares. Most evocative of all - the skeins of geese will fly north to the Duddon, their calling bringing us out of the house to watch.

Come January we will be woken again by the argumentative rooks and it will be a new year!