H is for hawk (but I’m not sure which specific one)

Animism, ravens, birds of prey

Late at night, after the others have gone upstairs, I like sit by the fire and watch the glowing embers dance. I put my face near the grate so I can hear their whispering song, the tiny creaks of cooling wood. Every so often, a little puff of sparks cascade up, and a flame, growing stronger, begins to curl around the charred log; a resurrection that seems to come from nowhere. The fire has a spirit, it is its own thing, it rises and wanes like all life. I cannot think otherwise.

A Buddhist teacher of mine said that animism was wrong, but much more right than the opposite, so if you’re splitting the world up into a binary, the preferable option. It’s nicer to pick berries and be thankful to the tree than assume there should be trees, and they should be producing berries just for you to take. The slave works for his master but it’s not a kind relationship; a person will do the same work for their beloved gladly, a give and take of kindness. I prefer loving relationships, and besides, it comes naturally to humans; even rationalists brought up in a cold dead western world revert to it, bestowing an essence on inanimate things: Cars. Particularly old trees. A childhood soft toy. Pebbles.

As a child I used imagine the lives of rocks; they started off as boulders and got smaller and smaller, until they were tiny grains of sand riding about on peoples shoes, still travelling the world. I never really grew out of it. A lecturer in oceanography of mine, a much respected academic, told me a large pebble on his desk ‘was a very soulful’ stone. I suppose it was; it was born in the heat and pressure of the mid-ocean ridge, extruded, hardened, broken, rolled around the ocean countless years, smoothed and rounded, washed ashore. That pebble had lived, it had a life of its own, and that rational man had attributed soul to it, so you can’t tell me that animism isn’t natural to humans, and you can’t tell me that stones don’t have spirit, or soul, whatever you want to call that cosmic essence.

Nights beside the fire are drawing to a close; even when the weather is bad, the days are optimistically growing longer and more powerful like the flames. Seeds swell in the soil, pushing up, driven by ann unknown force. The crocus emerge the colour of warm egg yolk to remind the sun what needs to be done, and an energy starts to flow in the earth once more. Things spring to life and grow without the need for a brain or a nervous system to tell them what to do, and if someone tells me magic is not real I quietly and politely think think they are mad.

Sketchings

Half term is not a good time for work, and as it’s been quiet in the shop I retreat to my sketchbook to stoke ideas for when the boys are back at school. I used to think my holiday lack of productivity was because I was just tired and had less time, but I think a lot of the problem is I’m just overwhelmed; there’s a lot more noise and interruptions and questions and I’m never sure what the schedule for the day is, and even if I am it can change at a moments notice, and I’m not good at any of those things. Sketches are fine though, because they don’t have to be good, and you can noodle on them in odd moments.

I’ve been thinking of printing something big for a while. I’ve been thinking of printing ravens too. Pencils are not so great for sketching linocut plans in detail because they are very different mediums;  pencils have shades and tones you can’t really achieve in a single linocut layer. Pencils are cheaper and more environmentally friendly than pens, however, and you can erase them, which is good for thinking on the page; even though I drew a preliminary sketch on rough paper before I started you can see a fair bit of rubbing out marks and remodelling as I worked. I don’t know when I’ll get round to working with these images but I’m happy with them.

You might notice I have sinned; I said I was going to work through my present sketchbook until it was done and I was good at it, but I have bought another sketchbook- sometimes A5 just isn’t big enough. Also, this one is yellow. I like the Seawhites travel journals but it’s hard to get hold of the A4 version for some reason so I’m trying out royal talens. I’ll let you know how I get on with it; it seems pretty good for pencil work, it’s a good weight but very smooth so I still prefer Seawhites. I do like the cream colour though, and it doesn’t disintegrate when you do a lot of rubbing out.

Sightings

Once I was on Glastonbury tor and a stately looking man with a white beard pointed into the distance and said ‘Merlin’. As is common with wizards, he read my mind that day as I politely nodded; what my mind was saying was ‘yes,yes, a magical wizard, you absolute madman’ and the withering glance he gave me stopped the world for a small second. ‘The bird’ he said. Sometimes if you have a pair of binoculars or a good looking camera, people point these things out to you. I think it’s the only time I’ve seen a merlin, probably because I wouldn’t recognise it otherwise.

I was thinking about this during a springtime walk early this week, as I watched a kestrel mob a buzzard. I think it was a kestrel, anyway. It made a sort of kestrel sound, but then, maybe distressed buzzards make a sort of kestrel sound, which must be considered. It certainly went after the bigger bird relentlessly whatever it was, and as is so often the case, I wonder what they are up to. The crows mob buzzards at breeding season if they get too close to the eggs and babies, but it seems too early for that; perhaps the buzzard has stolen a snack and needs to be punished.

I should confidently called it a kestrel, and you won’t know otherwise because you weren’t there. I often think that about nature writing, they say ‘I saw a goshawk’ and you believe them without proof. Doesn’t being so sure shut down other options? If you think, ‘I saw a kestrel’ you close your mind off the other possibilities.

I can identify birds of prey I see often pretty accurately; buzzards and red kites particularly. When a friend pointed out a buzzard, she was surprised I said it was a red kite without really looking at it, and certainly before it had shown its tail, but red kites fly completely differently to buzzards, and I know them both well. I can tell them apart from the marsh harriers I see at RSPB Otmoor, too, because I know to look for marsh harriers there, but would I be able to see the difference if I wasn’t specifically looking for marsh harriers? I’m not so confident.

I know the kestrel that hunts in the garden, but there are other kestrel size birds and from a distance without binoculars I can’t be completely sure unless they hover, not because I don’t know kestrels, but because I don’t know other small raptors well enough. I see them from time to time, a sparrowhawk, or a peregrine, but don’t know well enough to know how they feel in the air without thinking. I don’t think I’ve seen a hobby, but I might have. I might have seen a peregrine, and not known it was a hobby. Anyway, the point of this was to link to some kind of bird size comparison guide as something useful I found but I couldn’t find one which was frustrating. I can think why someone hasn’t made a database of bird flying silhouettes so you can compare size and shapes… it wouldn’t hurt, from an artistic point of view, to fling in a few mammals in there, and yet I can find no such thing. Six things has kestrels in this week though so you can have that instead.

I love drawing birds of prey, and because I like to use my own reference photos I have hundreds I’ve taken over the years in the wild, or stuffed bird cabinets in museums and at flying demonstrations as well as the odd dead or injured one if I’m lucky (and the bird isn’t). I’m not above stopping pest control in the street for a few photos either- this handsome fellow keeps pigeons away from the natural history museum in Oxford- just don’t show him the stuffed ones inside.