Dear Steve,
It is strange how things work out, isn’t it?
Having been late publishing XVIII, I was momentarily relieved that letter XIX was only a short one. The relief vanished when I read the letter, which had a focus on dead birds in the kitchen and birdsong. I had only recently covered things like the morning chorus, and whilst I know that I will return to it, I didn’t want to quite so soon. The other thing was the birds – Gilbert had three different species of Wren lined up on his kitchen table and was comparing them. There was no way I was in a position to do that.
Usually when Gilbert talks about something I’m squeamish about (examining dead birds on the kitchen table is definitely up there amongst the top items, I distract myself and go off at a tangent. A minor issue had been that no tangents were occurring to me, so what would the topic of this letter be?
Sometimes, problems have a way of solving themselves. Saturday morning. I went to put some food out for the birds. I usually look down to see if any of the spill had been eaten, of which the messy eaters make a lot, only to see a bird’s body head down in the dirt, quite dead. It wasn’t moving.
There was no way I was going to touch it; it looked bloated, full of gas. But, I was curious about it – what bird was it? I went and got a stick, so that I could at least move it around to take some pictures. I knew as soon as I prodded it that I wasn’t dealing with a real bird; it was one of Elayne’s plastic garden toys.
I was relieved that it wasn’t a real bird. But I was also disappointed. I wouldn’t have a chance to examine it close up and take some pictures and perhaps some measurements, beak size, wing length, characteristics of legs, things like that. I thought it would be quite Gilbertish But, there you go.
Like Gilbert’s letter, this one is also very short.
All the best
Bill.
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