Germaine Greer

A wildlife notebook

The morning is cold and dark but the orchard is thronged with birds. Moorhens dash from one side to the other; woodpeckers drill the damp ground for worms; fieldfares bounce from hawthorn hedge to apple tree and back again; magpies terrorise all of them. They freeze when the buzzard comes over until, crows and blackbirds having risen up to harass it, its great wings float it away. The red kites are a different matter. They slice through the air like thrown knives, before the other birds have had time to look up. One of the 50 doves that were wheeling above my workshop now lies panting feebly as a kite tires on its bloodied silver breast. All is as it should be.

When I come to let the geese out, I disturb a score of pheasants that taxi away with the intention of taking off, but they are too drunk from eating rotten apples to gain any height. Instead of steering through the trees at the edge of the wood, they tumble down pell mell. The geese, who can’t get off the ground at all, flap their useless wings and jeer loudly at the pheasants. Then they come running to where I will throw down their corn.

I feed the geese well away from their pen, to fool the rats. Yes, I have rats. If you keep birds, you will have rats. A man called Dick will come to put baits out for the rats if I ask him, but I’ve seen wrens flying in and out of the bait boxes, and wood mice and harvest mice newly dead on the garden paths, so Dick’s services have been suspended until and unless the rats make nuisances of themselves. Rats don’t like to live cheek by jowl with mice.

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