online: 22 december 2013
modified: 19 december 2013
19 december 2013 winter afternoon 2
seven sisters ponds
...almost every leaf has gone from the lime tree sprouts that a month or so ago were still retaining leaves... lit up in the sunlight like colour transparencies... casting coloured shadows on each other... but today the stalks are bare and next year's buds are already visible...
...a duck squawks... three others join him in head dips and duck-dives for whatever ducks find to eat below the water surface... life eating life as another life looks on and writes of what he thinks is happening...
...the air is cold... but almost still in the forest... after walking in wind round the football fields among dog walkers... one person with 11 dogs (of about 6 varieties or species... and one with 5 dogs of one variety: white poodles... at which i remember that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution depended much on the artificial breeding of horses and pet animals and the breeding of other species to feed or clothe us...
...getting up to look more closely at the lime stalks before me i see that some buds are already slightly opening... while a few meters upstream some other lime stalks retain a few yellow leaves on which some other form of life is thriving as mould-like growth along the edges of each leaf... and also as brown spots all over the leaf surface...
...three male ducks and one female stop eating and swim to the middle of the pond... where they float with their necks folded into their feathers...
...as i walk slowly away i catch sight of a heron standing immobile in shallow water... and then (as i too freeze into immobility) it steps (one leg at a time) over fallen reeds and willow branches until it stops again... perhaps not having seen me... for it looks away as i move slowly behind a tree trunk... he (or she it) looks briefly upward... but mostly it does not look around (not fearing attack by any bird or thing as i suppose it is at the head of a food chain)... i stay still for about 10 minutes while the heron stares intently at something at or below the water surface... with its long neck folded... while disregarding all this time the presence of several moor hens swimming quite close by... and whatever else it sees or hears or smells or infers (but i don't)...
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