To Youth in the Bird World

Many of you will know at least the start of Shelley's To a Skylark and Keats' Ode to a Nightingale the commencements of which are, respectively,

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,

and

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Keats is a poet whose work I generally enjoy greatly and that particular poem is one I used to know almost by heart.

Anyway today I was searching my Penguin Book of Bird Poetry for a suitable poem based upon young birds as an introduction to the photos I wanted to show you.  I could find none.  In fact I spent a good hour half watching the superb Djokovich v Del Potro Semi-Final and half reading bird poetry.  At this point I can see Adrian thinking up a suitably acerbic comment with which to adorn this post.

In fact although there are at least some poems on most common birds, on the whole bird poetry seems to be dominated by just a few birds: doves, larks, nightingales, robins and thrushes.  Somehow the fulmar and the wheatear seem to have been given a complete miss.

Young fulmars on the cliffs at West Wemyss

Parents doing the 'food run' for a young greenfinch.

I was asked if the birds ever used the nesting box on the garage wall.  I replied in the negative.
However a few days later all the young sparrows decided to use it as a resting place.

This young robin actually landed at my feet at the Maybury Garden Centre.
Even its parents seemed unconcerned by its association with me.

"Do you like this pose?"

This young wheatear has been flitting around the garden for a week or so gradually metamorphosing from a fledgling to a young adult

Okay a fairly fluffy young adult