FLYING AROUND THE FARLEIGHS WITH RAY MORRIS
LATE AGAIN!
Hmm. It’s not without some little embarrassment that the title of my June 24 article was also ‘Late again!’ And for substantially the same reason.
“Sloth”, I hear you mutter, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. At this time of year, anyone with even with just a passing interest in birds can’t help but notice the summer arrivals or, as Shakespeare named one of them – the House Martin – Guests of Summer. So throughout May I have been pre-occupied with another summer visitor, whose identity I will reveal in next month’s article, along with some locally taken photos.
I hope too that it will be met with “Yes, we heard one of those as we were walking to the pub last night” or “At last, I’ve seen one. It was down by the river when we were taking the dog for a walk. I’d never seen one before!”. The latter being more likely to have been uttered by someone born this century.
Older readers may well have seen or heard them before. Those with a love of literature will also be familiar with the name and their place in our culture. Not only were they mentioned in The Bible, one of the earliest mentions of them in literature was by a Muslim woman in 12th Century Spain where women from elite families were celebrated for their literary skills, although in this instance the lady in question – Hafsa bint al Hajj - used the reference to puncture a young man’s inflated opinion of himself as a lover!
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Anne Bronte and even Edgar Alan Poe (no, it’s not a raven) wrote about these birds – they feature in no less than five of Shakespeare’s plays plus one of his poems. In recent times they were even referred to in a reading at a royal wedding.
All will be revealed next month.