Magpies

For the last few weeks I’ve been woken about 5.30 every morning with the raucous sound that has come form a group of about five Magpies on a lamppost opposite my bedroom.

As suddenly as they came they have gone. For the last two mornings there has been silence at that time. This morning I roused about 5 and decided to lie there and listen for them. It was just possible that I had become used to them and didn’t “hear” them any more. A bit like the trains when you live close to a railway line.

About 6pm this morning a few other birds started up with their version of the dawn chorus but there was no sound a magpie. I missed what the NZ poet Denis Glover called the ‘quardle ardle oodle ardle wardle doodle’ of the magpies. I'm curious as to why they came and equally curious as to why they've gone.

Good news for my mother she has passed the test and will be going home from hospital on Wednesday. She found the exam exhausting and thankfully sank into bed when she arrived back at the hospital. If all goes according to plan she will be home two and half weeks after her slide from her chair.