Of Birds & Frogs….Riversong…..
by Bernie Bell - 10:03 on 29 October 2024
Birds & Frogs….
I got up this morning, looked out the window and there was a gang of birds in the Sycamore trees in our ‘jungle’….
I got my binoculars - thought they might be Fieldfares and took a pic. while calling for Mike to come and identify them properly. He then took some close-ups …
Who you lookin’ at?
Birds were coming and going – the first lot were Fieldfares, with a few Redwings amongst them. Then the Redwing flock swooped in - all 42 of them!…
Meanwhile, the juvenile Blackbird (we call him The Young Pretender) was defending the water dish again potential invasion….
Yesterday, Mike was strimming the meadow and rescued seven frogs from being strimmed – which he then placed by the pond.
It pleases us that all this life comes to, or lives in, our garden – and this is how it began…
https://theorkneynews.scot/2017/08/14/bernie-bell-i-can-hear-the-grass-grow/
River song….
From Mr. Mac & Co……
I quote from his Twitter …
“Hello: this is 'Riversong', a "broadside ballad" which protests the slow death of rivers in the UK & around the world––& sings for their revival.
'Riversong' is free to print, share, set & sing, speak aloud on a riverbank, post on walls or windows, adapt, translate, perform, turn into a placard on a protest, colour in, share with schools, friends, community choirs, campaign groups...ANYTHING you want. No permission is needed for any use: the only condition is that you use it for the good of rivers & people. Download link here or in my bio, hosted by the brilliant
@Right_2Roam: https://righttoroam.org.uk/riversong
The art is by @nickhayesillus1 & the words are by me. But there's no need ever to credit either of us. This is a choral work, made from & by many voices. Nick's border art is a single, sinuous flow of river-beings, human & more-than-human: Dipper, Otter, Swimmer, Stonefly, Cormorant, Elf Cups, Eel... The words running around the frame are imagined as River's "undersong", to be murmured below the main lyrics. Substitute the names of your own rivers & river-creatures there to make a new, localised undersong, anywhere in the world.
Historically, "Broadside ballads" were single-side printed sheets designed for announcing or protesting. For centuries, the arts of woodcut, typography & poetry thrived symbiotically on broadsides: image, letter & verse. Legibility & memorability are key to the broadside tradition: we've tried to preserve those qualities here.
7 years ago, Nick & I worked together on 'Heartwood', another free broadside ballad protesting the destruction of 1000s of street trees in Sheffield. ‘Heartwood’ ended up being fly-posted all over Sheffield, used in tree- & forest-protection from Canada to Hyderabad, & translated into Chinese, Dutch & Telugu. We’d love to see ‘Riversong’ move with similar wild energy in the world. Please share it on by tagging people in replies here who might like to see it, or emailing it or just…sending it to people. I’ll be speaking it aloud from the stage in Parliament Square at the huge @MarchforWater in London on 3/11. Join us! Bring a ‘Riversong’ placard!
Our fate flows with that of rivers, and always has.”
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