NIGHT MAGIC

No sleep again last night and \I do mean non at all. lately I have developed the habit of sitting in my tiny reading room for hours during the night,sniffing up the cool night air and listening to the sounds of the night. In the early hours of this morning something happened which made me forget how tired I was and filled me with such happiness that I can still feel it hours later.


Just outside the tiny window and within my hands reach grows a damson tree which a the moment is smothered in soft sweet ripe fruits which attract a mass of tiny fruit flies. As dawn was breaking the damson tree was filed with small birds,blue tits mostly,feasting on the small flies with great enjoyment. I watched their antics for a while and then ,quite suddenly, a small brown bird flew in to the tree within a couple of feet of my window and began to sing,the Nightingale had returned to us.

I have on several occasions this year thought that I had heard the Nightingale and once or twice I thought that I had caught sight of this illusive little bird,but I was never quite sure enough to tell anyone. Then a couple of weeks ago a friend told me that she had both seen the bird and heard its song while walking her dog in the grave yard at the crack of dawn.

Now I was sure,now there was no mistake,oh how I longed to reach for my camera yet I knew all the time that any slight movement on my part would cause the bird to fly away in fright; so I sat and listened entranced while the small bird sang its heart out,filling the orchard and my room with sweetness. Then,suddenly,like a busker who has sung in one place for long enough the bird stopped singing,gave a hop, like a stiff little bow and disappeared in to the boscage to be seen no more .

That a bird so small and quite frankly,dull looking can make such miraculous sounds has always amazed me and I often think of the gaudy Pea cock which in spite of all its beauty and grace can only produce such sounds as are offensive to the ear.

No longer in thrall I made coffee for myself and my son who was by now stirring,it no longer mattered that I was tired,that I had not slept, .my head and my heart were full of the lovely sound of the nightingale and the certainty of her return to our garden and the graveyard gave me a day long smile. Life is sweet.