A bird close to home

On the way home from town, on the road whose pavement is raised on steps and overlooks the sea, whose houses occupy just one side so as not to spoil the view, we heard a bird’s piercing song. We could see it in a tree but it was too far away to identify for sure. It sounded like a song thrush, but maybe slightly more songlike. A mistle thrush? The only way to know for sure was to rush home and get some binoculars. Home was close, so we did.

The bird had moved tree but we found it by its song in a new tree. It soon stopped singing but we stood and looked at it for a while. It was difficult to see in the fading sunlight. Probably a song thrush. (see previous blog)

As we looked, a friendly vagrant called out to us. He told us that he had seen the meteorite on Saturday 3^rd March. He didn’t think much of it until he saw it on the news the next day. You could probably look it up on the computer but when he left school in 1981 they didn’t have computers. He began to move on.

Then another passer-by shouted to us, asked us what we were looking at. We explained. It must have seemed like there was something extremely interesting in that tree for there to be two people staring into it with binoculars. The man told us that he had seen a program on TV where there were lots of people in a field looking at a rare bird and then a big tomcat came and ate it up.

The vagrant at the other end of the street was shouting something about how he was observing an observer observing the observers.