At last...

A new blog, at last. The past couple of years have been busy—a transition, as it were, from one book to another and now the second one is finished and edited and has a lovely cover and a title and all the things  books usually have. It'll come put in February and is called 'Field Notes From a Hidden City' and is—among other things— about some of  the urban and domestic creatures with whom we share our lives.

In the house, all is well. Chicken is a venerable old rook by now. Her eyesight is poorer than it was and the processes of avian ageing mirror those of humans remarkably. She is slower, more tentative and can no longer see sufficiently to leap onto the branches in her house. She roosts on the spars of chairs in the kitchen and wanders from study to kitchen as she always did. I put her food on the floor of her house and her appetite seems undiminished. She is, if anything, more communicative, her range of sounds wider and ever more subtle.She makes clear her approval and disapproval as ever and calls to me every morning in the moment before my mobile phone is set to wake me up. At the moment, she's moulting and looks terrible, like a small, scruffy dinosaur. Her feathers are growing in she spends a lot of time preening while I spend a lot of time picking up feathers and bits of keratin from the floor. Every day, I am aware that the  time we may have together is limited and I try to appreciate the nature of my fortune in having spent so many years with her.

Ziki is in excellent form. He's still nervous and I wonder if he'll ever be anything else. He thrives in spite of it and is hale and loud and beautiful. He has the ruff of fine grey round his neck as all crows do at moulting time  and drifts of soft feathers scatter his quarters too.

The doves are well and in some cases, ancient. I have some who must be 15 at least. They show me the same calm disregard as ever and I would wish it no other way.