Wren

I’ve been sitting indoors, watching nothing in particular, isolated by my own unwillingness to go out. This is my bubble, double-glazed against sound, the rippling grey clouds that clothe the January sky, the chilling breeze that fingers the trees. The garden is a green waiting room. Not much is happening, except the marking of time that will eventually tell the buds to burst and set in motion the hormone-fuelled euphoria of spring.

I notice a movement: a small brown bird has landed on a stone. A wren! It’s a chinless, truncated, bobbing, penny-weight of a bird. Its plumage is a basket-weave of humus-brown and pale straw, of toadstools, leaf litter and faded grasses. In its beak is a writhing grass-green caterpillar, the same as one I picked up from the path last week – fat and floppy. I wondered then what winged creature it might have grown into had it not died there on the concrete slab.

A brief second of stillness. Then the wren bends forward and smashes the caterpillar violently against the stone. It jumps around and beats the helpless creature again. Its back is turned now, but I know it has swallowed that nutritious parcel of protein and fat. It crouches into a cursory bow, drops down into the grass and tunnels underneath plants. Another caterpillar. The same crushing blows. The wren bobs discretely and, apparently satiated, helicopters away on tiny wings.