The farmers been at work since five. He's delighted to stop and chat. This morning he's on his way to cut the bamboo that's growing by the track that leads up to the village. He's driving a Czech made tractor that he bought thirty years ago. It's the only one he's got that can deal with the razor sharp bamboo stems. Seems he planted the bamboo because the eagles love to perch it it. I ask him to repeat this and yes, it seems the eagles do like to perch in it. The bamboo has now grown to a height of thirty feet and is becoming impenetrable. Time for it to be thinned out. I feel like asking him what the eagles will do but think better of it.
The farmer knows all the local birds. This doesn't mean that he simply knows what species they are but knows many of them by the way they fly and behave. Birds as individuals. There's something very French village in that concept. We watch the swallow tailed kite drifting by overhead in silence. The farmer says we're lucky to see one. They fly around in the valley when the weather's changing. 'There'll be some wind coming through tonight'. This seems improbable as there's not a cloud in the sky.
Sophie watches him drive off on his tractor to fell the bamboo.
She turns to look at me before drinking and gives me an unmistakable ' Is everything alright ? ' look. Satisfied that it is she then has a long slurrpy drink from the stream.
Twenty minutes later she has another equally slurrpy drink from the zinc bath by the village walls. Morning walks can be thirsty work.
6 comments:
It's hard to imagine bamboo sturdy enough to support an eagle, but maybe once it reaches 30 feet. . . I can understand the farmer. Just yesterday, I watched a flock of pigeons wheeling overhead and told my daughter it was about to rain. She looked at me like I was nuts, but I was right. I guess it's something I learned when I was a child in the wild woods of New Jersey. And I'm sure Cherry would understand Sophie's taste in water. Cherry's favorite sources are, in order, a saucer that sits out on our patio and fills with rain water, a watering can in the living room and, in last place, her own water dish. I have read that it is important to provide our parrots with foraging opportunities, but maybe this goes for PONs as well?
Slurpy drinking? Is there any other way of drinking?
Gail and I are wondering what happens to the cut bamboo. Can the farmer locate a hungry giant panda somewhere not too far away?
Toodle pip!
Bertie.
Hari OM
Well, bamboo for starlings is a thing, so why not eagles? Mind you, bamboo can be jolly invasive, too... and my old farmer grandad was a great natural meterologist and could tell from the way leaves were lying or how the sheep walked in the fields what was on the way. So you will have to report to us whether a 'wind' arrived! YAM xx
My neighbours planted bamboo along our adjoining boundary wall some years ago - and we all bitterly regret it. It, is as YAM says, so invasive, and very difficult to eradicate. Not sure if there has been an increase in starlings, but we certainly haven't seen any eagles, or hungry Pandas!
My thoughts exactly!
So much interesting-tasting water.
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