DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

There has been a pair of mistle thrushes in the paddock for the past three weeks or so. They've been a pleasure to watch. They have a great flight, like a breast stroke swimmer, coming up for air after every couple of strokes. This morning I saw one feasting on worms exposed by the newly cut grass. This afternoon I saw one dead on the gravel by the barns. No indication of how it died. Oma suggested it might have flown into a window and bounced back dead. I picked it up. It was crisp to the touch and surprisingly light for a bird of that size. Now I can't see its partner. I guess I won't.
I first got close to the natural world by stealing birds' eggs as a boy. I had a good collection, all nicely blown (which is an art) and kept in shoe boxes lined with cotton wool. I had a mistle thrush's I expect. I shinned up trees and steeled myself against hedgerow lacerations to get them. For a rarer species I'd go farther afield, and I had a map in my head, where places were named after what we kids discovered there, or the adventures we would create. I've a mind now to do the same, but make the map. Perhaps I will make a tracing of an OS map. I like the idea of it being in the micro scale of a child's eye.
Dead Thrush Patch. That could be on it.