'Love pigeons' was the sobriquet given to us once by a friend whose second language is English. I do not love pigeons, as readers will know, but I was amused to stand still and watch a pair of wood pigeons, on a snowy wall in the sunshine, engrossed in the preliminaries of courtship - much preening, ducking of heads under wings and literal 'billing and cooing'. I passed on before it all reached its consummation.
This crazy courting couple have evidently not heard of the traditional saying that every bird should take its mate on St Valentine's Day, as Chaucer tells us in his Parliament of Fowls. If you can find his poem in translation it is well worth a read.
And right at the end of Chaucer's stanzas, listing all the birds he saw gathered before Nature, comes 'The throstil old; the frosty feldefare'. How accurate Chaucer is in his observation. On our allotments, among the blackbirds and throstles (thrushes) the fieldfares are gathered in loose flocks like the birds that illustrate this blog. They have come down from the north, compelled by the snowy weather to seek their sustenance here.
I think we have lost some of the wonder and delight in the natural world that Chaucer knew and relished. I think also that many of the Twenty First Century no longer believe, as he did that Nature is 'the vicaire of the almyghty Lord'. I am still considering what this meant this poet of the Fourteenth. Meantime, let the birds sing happily at the poem's close:
"Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe
That hast this wintres wedres overshake,
And driven away the longe nyghtes blake!"
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