Six, seven, eight, nine long‑tailed tits are on a foraging flit through hawthorn bushes, and the straggler drops obligingly on to a berry‑stacked twig before my eyes. Its tail works like the hand of a clock as the clinging bird jiggle‑jumps through a full 360-degree rotation, beak pecking for who knows what. The twig is unmoved by such exertions, for the bird weighs the equivalent of seven paperclips. What must it be like to inhabit the insubstantial ghost‑world of a long‑tailed tit, where you can leap and land all you like with no discernible impact?
Ahead and above, a bird 100 times its weight is weightless in the sky. The soaring buzzard masters gravity with its “fingertips” – the deeply separated primary feather tips on the wings. I cannot see the little flicks and tilts that enable it to descend in controlled steps; drop and hold, drop and hold.
The buzzard begins a slow circumnavigation of the space above an oak crown on the old railway embankment and then thinks better of it, cutting away towards the top of a stately conifer. Here it makes like the post-Christmas fairy, talons thrust forward to alight at the very tip. This, it would seem, is destined to be its lookout perch.
Nobody has told the tree. The bird tucks its wings away on landing, but not quite. One wing is held crooked and refuses to close. Then the other wing half rises, straightens, fingers reaching out. The buzzard squirms and shifts its grip, but still it can’t find stability on its perch. There isn’t a breath of wind, but perhaps the tree is forced to flex under an overheavy burden. The bird is visibly discombobulated.
Watching this anxiety-ridden performance, I am suddenly aware that my arms have lifted themselves from my side in sympathy, as if I too was trying to balance. In this moment, when I can truly relate to the discomfort and uncertainty of a fellow creature, I feel the warmest gush of true empathy.
The buzzard gives up on Christmas and peels away, letting gravity carry it down off the side of the bank. Fast, very fast.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
