78.

Mid October.

Clouds and waves of birds. The sky fills with swelling and changing shapes, sometimes dense, othertimes thin and fragmented. Chaffinches, bramblings, cirl buntings, goldfinches, more I cannot identify. They swoop and pour onto the uncut sunflower heads and onto the turned fields, rising again in billows with thin chatterings and tsips and chinks. Then buzzards, about 7 of them, circling high, then spiralling down, some perching on trees or fence posts. opportunists all. This is the great migration funnelling in through the Pyrenean passes.

Marie's marmalade cat sits quite still, tail end twitching and trembling as she watches a group on the pear tree who dart in and out of the curling leaves finding soft insects and blown seeds. As I stand, hardly daring to move,  3 willow warblers arrive,  blushed buff little chests, weaving and darting amongst the low ivy at the base of the tree, their clear tsooee warning calls check out the cat.  And gathering this sudden harvest,  5  kestrels swing, hover,  loop and plummet..What a show! An essential experience. Gives me the measure of myself. Insignificant!

4 piles of cut oak logs are stacked pleasingly in the barn. A chill wind blows.