At six, a thick sea fog envelops Scurdie Ness. I can see barely one hundred yards from my seat at the window. Only House Sparrows, so far, enliven the little garden. Animating the yard of my Inside-Out Aviary.
Occupying one quarter of an acre, at most, this is a very small rectangle of Rewild-able ground that we have been able to take into “stewardship”.
My job is simple. To wind this land back into a healthy condition. Ecological restoration. As fast as is possible, for an old bloke and one with few resources.
Fortunately, we live between arable fields and the sea, only two terraces above the shoreline. Just where the fresh waters of the river South Esk break free.
After one of those terrible storms, in February, there is a ton of Angus driftwood washed-up along the upper strand. So each day, I go down there and select a few choice pieces, sticks and stones and miscellaneous flotsam, which I carry home in order to scaffold and insulate the new world of our evolving wilder garden. And, in view of the above, I feel I must do this as quickly as is possible. It’s “Rewilding”, out of time, out of line. Gardening for Nature, out of the box.
There’s history. When I was a boy of six or seven, (though it seems like not so long ago), one day in early spring I was left alone in “Birdland”. Placed there, with a picnic box, by my parents in what they thought was a “safe and secure” location at Bourton-on-the-Water, a village deep in the rural Cotswolds of an England now expired.
There I was able to help a pair of incarcerated Magpies who I discovered were desperate to build their nest. Consequently I spent hours that day running around the confines of the site gathering as many twigs and sticks as possible.
After each foray, by the time I got back to the cage, they were already there waiting for me. Hanging quietly on the wire.
Absorbed by my task, utterly in the moment, I would return to thread a slender twig or thicker piece of branch through the cold grey diamonds of chicken wire that couldn’t quite divide us. Calling to me in hoarse clucks and chuckles and through knowing soulful eyes, the two prisoners would gently take each twig from me, then turn and in an explosion of iridescent feathers flutter back to the far corner of their cage. For here was their only feasible nesting site, tucked eight foot from the floor, out of direct sunlight, under the buckled plywood planks that formed the roof.
Sixty two years later, here in my very own box, I often think back to my moments with the magpies. Gleaning ancient vertebrate instruction I seek to build my own bird bower in this quiet corner. Connected to the moments of a life in Birdland.
It’s my way of life. A democracy I have made for bird constituents. Now pecking at the window of our house with their avian bill of rights.
Vagrant Mind 