Heroes Not Zombies

Do you associate certain birds with particular places?

I know that now that I live inland, whenever I visit a coastal town I’m quickly aware of the cries of gulls. I noticed that when I visited Edinburgh recently where their calls added to the sense of familiarity I was experiencing revisiting the city I’d spent so many years in, in the past. And even when in the middle of the city they made me think of the sea.

I also associate the caw, caw of crows calling in Tokyo – which every time I was there surprised me and gave me a sense of returning to somewhere familiar.

Around this part of south west France buzzards are perhaps the most striking and distinctive birds, both when I see them riding the air currents and call their high pitched call high, high above, and when I drive past a vineyard and see one perched majestically on one of the poles at the end of a row of vines.

When I was in Segovia last week one of the first things I noticed were the vast ramshackle nests sitting on top of church spires, bell towers, high roofs and tall trees. The storks have gone now, flown off to Africa or the Middle East for the winter so the empty nests remind me of the characteristics of travel and migration shared by so many living creatures.