Grief and Nature

 

Over the last couple of years nature has become my safest place and I spend most of my free time watching and photographing birds with my wife. We’re a well-oiled machine these days; she carries the scope, I take the camera, and we both have binoculars around our necks and sometimes our little dog is attached to her waist. We spend hours walking and standing still, talking about what we’ve seen and staying silent. We make lists, try to learn bird calls, sometimes we can recognise a bird straight away and sometimes it takes some time, we meet new people, learn things and share sightings, we love it. Our bird list is modest compared to other birders but the thrill is in the doing it, in being there.

I have depression and it isn’t something I’m often able to forget about. The first bird hide we sat in gave me an instant feeling of calm and I found it more mindful than meditation. It took no effort to sit back and enjoy what was happening in front of us because the view from the hide was so busy with jays, mandarins, great spotted woodpeckers, blue tits, nuthatches and chaffinches flitting about feeding and flying. As soon as we got home we bought a bird ID book and some binoculars and I couldn’t wait to get out there again. We’ve seen many birds since that we didn’t know existed back then and we still stop to enjoy the ones we’ve always been familiar with.

It’s hard to find comfort in anything right now. One of my favourite people has died; my papa/my dad’s dad. Writing that sentence still doesn’t feel real even though I know it’s true. He loved birds too, knew how to whistle many of their calls, and spent a lot of time outdoors as a kid in the 1940s climbing trees and seeing whatever he saw. He was delighted when I told him I was heavily into birdwatching, but our interests never lined up at the same time. He had been blind for many years before I found birds, and by that time he was well into his 80s.

Watching birds is about watching life happen in front of you. The birds are living and their main aim is to survive and help their young to do the same. It’s hard to think about life when someone has died. I don’t want to hear ‘life goes on’ because my thoughts are full of the loss of someone spectacular who isn’t alive anymore. This is my first big loss, and although these things are inevitable, nothing truly prepared me for how this would feel. And it hurts.

Since he passed almost a week ago I’ve only been outside a couple of times but I did manage to find some joy there. We’ve seen some wonderful things. Goldcrest, bullfinch, nuthatch, treecreeper, jay, blue tit, great tit, long-tailed tit, coal tit, chaffinch, goldfinch, blackbird, sparrowhawk, buzzard, red kite, kestrel, starlings, robin, wren, mistle thrush, crow, magpie, sparrow, dunnock and an uncharacteristic cormorant flying over our house.

Having so many birds on our doorstep is brilliant and it has made the collective hour or so I’ve spent outside meaningful. Going further afield doesn’t feel possible for me right now but I know that nature and all its beauty will still be there when I make it back.