Tarka the Blackbird

I’ve just finished reading Tarka the Otter and it was everything I expected it to be, whilst also being the opposite. I laughed, I cried, I exclaimed in shock and much to the annoyance of my partner I kept on insisting that I read bits out loud to him. I’m still recovering from the sad but heroic ending and still very confused about what some of the animals actually were! If you haven’t read it I would definitely recommend it. Sometimes when you read a book you are touched by the subject, sometimes you are so unaffected you can pick up the next book straight away. I have books that I can read over and over again, some that I cherish because of the way it looks or the way it feels. I don’t think I will ever throw Tarka out! Since beginning the book I have developed an insight into animal behaviour and an inquisitiveness.

Last week there was a series of bird stories flying around the staff room, almost all of us had almost hit a bird in the car, witnessed a tawny owl in the tree house or disturbed a nest of some kind. Mine goes something like this: I was retrieving a bucket in order to wash my car from the outdoor store and awoke a mummy black bird, she chi-rupped at me very loudly until I dared to return for the sponge at which point she swooped over my head and into a nearby tree. She continued to chi-rup at her baby that was still in the nest and looking more than a little straggly. The baby eventually made its escape but couldn’t manage more than a few meters before it grounded, mummy bird hot at his heels chip chip chi-rupping. That was it I thought, he has had it and it is my entire fault for wanting to wash my car. A good excuse to go to the car wash next time, but I couldn’t shake the guilty feeling. The next day driving down the road we encountered another baby black bird sitting in the road, the mother again on the side of the road chi-rupping what I can only imagine was something like ‘use your bloody wings you daft bat, get out of the road!’ But it only moved when I attempted to pick it up, it flapped and scurried into the hedge. I felt a little better but never forgot our blackbird. Then this morning I had a little surprise, I looked out of the kitchen window into the garden and saw two little blackbirds, one mummy looking and one a bit rough around the edges. At first I thought that they were fighting over some food we had dropped the night before, but then I realised they were sharing it, or were they playing with it? Inspired by Tarka I began to imagine their story since leaving the store, perhaps that was the push the baby needed to spread his wings and start on the difficult journey of becoming an adult. I imagined the mother teaching him how to find food, how to survive life outside the nest, maybe it was him we rescued from the road and that was another lesson learnt?Whatever their story is I’m confident it is the same baby and that he will go on to live a full and exciting life.