I’ve just put an assortment of food inside the cage of the ground feeder. The mesh is big enough for smaller birds and also starlings to get into, but thrushes are bigger and fatter and so can’t get through the mesh. To help the bigger birds like the Thrush I started to open the cage door just enough to let birds like the thrush in. The Thrushes come. There is one young one especially. He slowly walks round this feeder, puts his beak inside but cannot get to the food, so he climbs on top of the wire of the feeder and look downs at the food inside. The one thing none of the thrushes see is the open cage door. They walk past it all the time. To and fro, round and round the meshed feeder.

I want to knock on the kitchen window. And scream at this young thrush. THE FEEDER CAGE DOOR IS OPEN. I OPENED IT JUST FOR YOU.

 I’m going to call this young thrush Thomas. I can’t go on calling it the young Thrush

I feel like I’ve known Thomas since he was an egg. I haven’t – but it feels like it. When I watch as he nervously tries to get to the food I hope he grows up more confident than he is now.

Thrushes really are shy birds. I’ve seen this shyness in action time and time again. They will sit on the fence and watch other birds feeding, then they will fly away into a quiet corner.

This morning Thomas finally found a little grated cheese I’d put near the blackcurrant bush. He started to have his breakfast – then from nowhere a fat, no-nonsense blackbird came towards this food. Without a fight Thomas flew away – away from his breakfast. If it’s true that the meek will inherit the earth then Thomas will be the king.

There’s a sparrow hopping in and out of the feeder at the same time as the starlings . They all co-exist together. The small sparrow does not fly away because the starling is there. Why is the thrush so meek and shy?

 Thrushes must have some spirit though. Here again is a poem that shows that spirit.

 

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be 
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware

The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy

This poem shows how one bird can affect a person. It paints a picture of a desolate, cold landscape and out of that landscape comes something that cannot be understood. Why should an old, frail thrush on a freezing night, when surely food was short, sing a joyful song? Answer unknown. And why are thrushes so shy at the bird feeders yet must have such spirit to be the only bird singing on a desolate evening.

Tags: ground-feeder, mesh, poem, thrush