The Visitors, a poem by Tony Boniface
Parading on the parapet
Reflecting ultraviolet
Blue tits rotate upon the wires
Awakening their spring desires.
They chase away intruding rivals
Threatening our pair's survival.
Pecking round the nest box entrance
Calculating if the distance
Will allow their bodies access
To the safety of the darkness.
Now their nesting site is chosen
Hair and wool and feathers woven,
Thirteen days the hen-bird settles
On the eggs with red-brown freckles.
The male spends much time foraging
Responding to her fluttering
Feeds the female food she fancies
Searches bark upon the branches.
He dives into the nesting box
Safe from a passing cat or fox.
Both birds hunt eventually
Searching round their territory
Looking for small caterpillars
Nestlings need to grow their feathers.
I wonder how long it will be
Before I hear them noisily
Greet the adult food providers
Bringing a meal of garden spiders.
Every morning 1 observe
Trying one species to conserve,
I'm honoured by their presence here
Sharing my garden without fear.
I wonder if they are aware
Some other being who may care
Exists, giving that extra food
Preparing them to hatch a brood.
I wait as summer passes by
To watch the fledglings learn to fly.
The parent birds no longer visit
The baby tits have made their exit.
But wait I can see more than three
Are flitting in that elder tree.
Surely my eyes must be deceived
Too wonderful to be believed
A fledgling flies through open door
And lands upon the hallway floor.
Flies out and rests upon the car
Calling its parents from afar.
I watch in silent admiration
Another blue tit generation.
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 57, September 2008
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