The day old chicks

left for bait high

in the nook of beech

are gone.

Become

a wriggle and seethe of maggots

a jay feeding watches me climb.

These endless wheels of flesh

turning.

I’ve spent much of the last few weeks ‘working’ in the trees and what a delight it has been. I’ve had a serious purpose which is to try and get some photos of raptors using infra red Trail Cameras but the real delight has been the aesthetics of it all.

There is a glade in the beechwoods full of bluebells at the moment where I climb up to the top of one of the trees to sit in the canopy and read. It’s superbly beautiful at present given the season.

I’m currently baiting here so I’m surrounded by the forlorn corpses of day old chicks which so far are not proving very popular at all. I may unwittingly be reenacting some terrible pagan ritual 90 feet up.

Sit up there long enough in what is my second favourite place in the world to be, doze off, wake up with a start when the ropes pull tight and find you’ve turned into a green man.