being an adult

It was not looking very happy, but it was well camouflaged; in fact I did not notice it at all until it was pointed out to me. Oh. A chick. Grey, rather large, rather ugly. Not very happy, but seemingly completely unbothered by our presence; I got within centimetres of it to take a picture and it didn't even budge. The RSPCA told me later that it did that most likely believeing itself to be invisible, meaning that it was safer for it to pretend to be a stone than to run away. Probably right.



Unhappy big grey wild bird chick in a ditch. We could not decide what species it was - a heron seemed possible, pointy beak and all, but what would a heron chick be doing in a awatery ditch on the side of a sleepy Totley lane? Apart from looking unhappy that is. We hovered, undeciced. Do we take it home? Do we leave it here? Do we call someone? To think that just a few years back there wouldn't have been an argument - a shoe-box would have been found and we would have taken it home of course, we can't leave it out here, it's cold and lonely! Now we hovered and discussed. My friend said: this is such a city-people approach. In nature things die and are born all the time, my aunt would have said, so stop making a fuss, she would have said. Well yes, there is that, I suppose. And being a resposible adult, thick skinned and unaffected by the small (imagined?) sufferings of the world. We should walk away, it's parent will come and get it. probably. Or something will come and get it anyway, and eat it, I think to myself, remembering the time when I tried to rear a chick which fell out of its nest in the garden; we were doing well, feeding it tadpoles, but one morning I turned up to the spot where I constructed it a surrogate nest, on the ground, and its head was missing. Well, probably it was not as dramatic as that, probably the bird was just not there, perhaps there was a blood-splattered feather or two, but this is how my immagination made me remeber it - a half-eaten chick in a surrogate nest. Oh well. We are adults now. These things happen. Keep walking.

I did call the RSPCA from home, but they very politely said there is nothing they can do, and that walking away was probably the best thing we could have done. Made me feel mature and reasonable for a moment, and then just a bit guilty - not so much to the bird, but to my younger self.

At least we found out what it was - a woodpigeon chick. And that does make me feel better. Because it's one thing to leave a heron chick, of which there are not that many (to my knowledge) around, another to leave a woodpigeon, which are not an endangered species in any way.

(The younger self scowls and shrugs, and goes back to playing with tadpoles.)