buzzards above

(a year in fragments)

Somewhere in a tree on top of the hill behind my house, a pair of buzzards have made their nest. I have not seen the nest (although I imagine it, a large, complex construction hidden amongst the branches), but I've watched the birds fly up to it through the woods, and down from it to the fields. The whole of my town in the valley must appear spread out below them from their vantage point on the wing: these diurnal raptors fly a long way up, above us and largely unseen. Once I begin to notice the birds of prey, I observe them from all around the town— they are often nearby when least expected. I speak to no-one of the buzzards, but I start to note down my sightings. They feel like a message to be decoded.

‘Buzzards probably are best known for, and readily recognised by, their distinctive loud calls and grand soaring flight, when individuals or groups of these large and vocal hawks soar and sweep in large circles high around the sky, the adults sometime performing spirited acrobatic displays.’

—Peter Dare (The Life of Buzzards)

It is the first week in September and I’m walking along the crest of the far hillside that cradles the town. There are hips, haws, sloes, ripe blackberries, and the very last of the wild flowers—scabious and wild thyme. The wind is warm and from the long, parched, drying grass, I can still hear the chirp of crickets. A single buzzard is flying, high and fast in the wind, its kittenish cries almost drowned by the gusts. After a moment, it is gone.

Late autumn—a clear-skied afternoon. I’m tired, and I have been crying. I head to the shops in search of bread, and something to feed the children after school. I feel heavy: pulled in different directions by responsibility and by creativity. Some instinct tells me to look up, and I see a buzzard hovering directly above me—right over the high street shops—its wings spread wide. It hangs still in the air, intently focused on the ground below.

In early springtime I am taking an early morning walk through the damp, garlic-scented woods. One of the buzzards comes in low between the beech trees, emerging from the corner where they nest. Its cry today sounds different, more staccato than the call of summer. Further up the path, I spot the second bird of the pair, sitting in a tree—still and silent. Unmoving, it watches me pass.

At a house across town in late spring, I turn my head to look out of an open sash window. Clouds melt into powder blue above a single tree standing on the hillside. Above this—the opposite hill to mine—a buzzard flies in repeated languorous circles. Directly below it, I know there to be a path that leads down to the big ruined farmhouse we discovered one New Years Eve: peering through windows, past tattered curtains, at the crumbling staircase, the dust-encrusted table and the ragged coats still hanging in the hall.

Summer comes, the air is humid, and there is Rosebay Willowherb in the verges. I am walking down the lane, so deep in thought that I hear the buzzard before I see it. Opening the gate at the bottom, by the sheep field, I stop at the sound of its mewling cry. At first, I can’t make it out amongst the gulls that fill the sky above my head. They are flying away, across the town—a flock, an exodus, a migration—so many. Hidden amongst them, the buzzard waits on wide wings. As the gulls pass and part, it flies alone—floating and still calling. For as long as I can, I keep it in my sight as I walk home.

Heatwave, harvest, late summer. I’m out with my youngest, strolling along the path that borders the woods and the long stretch we call ‘the fossil field’ (because its plowed furrows sometimes throw up ammonites encased in limestone lumps). It’s late afternoon but still baking. The swishing barley has been mown, and straw lies heaped along the field edge. A buzzard spins slowly above us, riding the currents of hot air.

The year turns, and once again it’s the first week in September. I am feeding the chickens in the midday sun when I notice the buzzards’ screech. My head is a low-level hum of unfocused, restless thoughts, but the cry cuts through. I look up and see two of them turning slow, intersecting circles against the azure sky between the clumps of trees on the hilltop. Their wings are spread and they glide. After a summer of salt water and raindrops, the familiar shapes of the buzzards pull me back to who I was before seven weeks of chaos—I feel a return to my noticing self, my thinking self, my writer self. I step back into the kitchen, still hearing their calls through the open door, and I make my way up to my desk.

Later, as I set off on the school run, I hear the buzzards again. I pass my middle son at the end of the road and almost don’t recognise him in his newly acquired secondary school uniform—his brother’s blazer large on his small form. Before I turn the corner, I stop and look back to watch him walking towards home. Above him—above us—a buzzard wheels, high in the cloudless blue. It feels like a talisman, a secret, a reminder to look beyond.

Thank you for reading,

Laura x

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