Will-O'-The-Wisp

                                                                                                                                                                                 Photo by Jo Sinclair

I sometimes get a premonition of an animal before I actually see it. It 'feels' as though I might see a fox; a few moments later one foxtrots across the path. It feels as though I might see a barn owl; then I see a luminous shape skirting the field at low level in the fog. Sometimes this may be because I've sensed a smell or sound subliminally, before my eyes have reassured me of the facts. Sometimes it  may be a feel for the landscape - knowing that a place is suitable habitat, or the weather is providing the right atmosphere. Soft rain often brings animals closer because it muffles human presence slightly.

Yesterday I followed a path across waste-ground, old pasture and water meadows and thought barn owl. I was on a route I'd walked three times. No barn owls back then, but today seemed right. All I found was a wisp of the bird that had been hunting the turf at the edge of the railway track. A perfect corpse lay neatly alongside. The plumage was still soft and luxurious. The edge of the flight feathers were barbed like a comb, engineered for perfect stealth. These tiny details  returned a sense of life to the dead owl's cardboard cutout form.

Sunlight flashed on two rooks stamping and pecking black and blue across glinting plough furrows. I reached the river. A kingfisher was difficult to find through my camera lens, but streaked electric blue like sirens on a motorway as it flew upstream.

Back home, I recorded the corpse to my local environmental records centre. And I signed a petition the Barn Owl Trust is running to lobby Government Health And Safety on the rat poison toxins that have been found in 84% of the barn owl population. 

                                                                                                       Photo by Jo Sinclair

Throbbing life seems elusive on a dull December day, but the season is pushing forward like a battering ram.  The Neolithic engineers who guided the rising sun into their chamber at Newgrange in County Meath were optimists hoping for a bright new year. There, in a window of opportunity lasting only five days, sunrise sends an intense beam of light sweeping into a narrow stone corridor: a symbol of life-giving light. Winter solstice 2013 has been and gone.

                                                                                                     Photo by Jo Sinclair