Compost Awareness Week

It's Compost Awareness Week in the UK. Find out more here.

Planet Earth 2020

In this derelict valley
where old satellite photos show
there were once forests and fertile plains
farmers scratch a poor living
and hide from packs of rabid dogs.

Vultures once cleaned up the dead
animals that now pile
across the land. The last vultures
died years ago, staggering and deformed
poisoned by banned drugs.

The aliens behind their invisibility shields
telemessage back to their planet
"Mostly stupid"
turn through the wormhole
home.


Population of white backed vulture in northern India in 1990s - 30 million
Population of white backed vultures today - 11 000

The dramatic fall in population has been caused by use of the veterinary drug Diclofenac, which stays in the carcasses of domestic animals and is then ingested by vutures. The drug has been banned for animal use but is still available for human use and is still finding its way into the vultures. The drug Meloxicam is a vulture-safe alternative to Diclofenac. All three species of Indian vulture will probably be extinct within ten years. There is evidence that Diclofenac is now being exported to Africa.

To find out more about vultures in crisis across the world and about successful breeding programmes, visit the Vulture Rescue website. If you live within the distribution range of any vultures in Asia, you can help map their popluations, see here for details.

Science Fiction for Read Write Poem

You can read my recent scifaiku here and here.
You can read an earlier poem I wrote about vultures here.

Dalkeith Country Park

Dalkeith Country Park is a lovely area of woodland near Edinburgh. At this time of year, the woods are carpeted with bluebells (see above), wood sorrel and lesser celandines. The birds sing loudly, we heard blue tits, great tits, chaffinches, blackbirds and robins. Looking up into the trees I could see loads of small birds, most of which didn't come any closer but one goldcrest flew into the lower branches and bowed to me, showing the yellow crest on its head. Later a mistle thrush loudly shouted at us.

It was nice to see in the ancient oak wood, that oak seedlings had been planted and protected from the grazing cows.

Later in Dalkeith town we saw our first swifts of the year. I've just seen more outside our window here, which may mean spring is really here at last.

You can read about another trip we made to Dalkeith Country Park (and see more photos) here.

Torrential Rain

As we started walking up Arthur's Seat, we could see the rain out to the west, shining silver in the sunlight. The sky was dull and the air was damp around us but it didn't start raining until we reached the small loch. Then it became torrential as we watched the mallards swimming, swans sitting on their nest in the middle of the water, tufted ducks diving for food, looking like white streaks underwater. We turned back quite soon, made our way back down the hill, hunching ourselves against the rain. Then as we got halfway down the rain stopped and the clouds cleared, leaving a beautiful blue sky. The gorse bushes all around us shone golden, overburdened with flowers. Then we saw it. On the hill, a small brown animal ran into our sights and then stopped to stare. A weasel! We watched the rabbit it might have been stalking run away, then the weasel ran up the rocky hill.

Torrential rain for Weekend Wordsmith

You can read about previous walks round Arthur's Seat (and see photos!) here.

A Family of Blackbirds

Father has one white eyebrow, sings beautifully.
Mother is the brown of polished chestnuts
with a beak as bright as her mate's.
Dutifully they collect food, wait
every morning for the feast of raisins
to carry to their brood
hidden in a garden tree.

Soon they will come to the lawn
with large-mouthed, speckled young
teach them to pull worms from grass
to recognise the footsteps
that promise raisins.

for my parents, who feed raisins to the blackbirds

Family for Sunday Scribblings

Brood parasites

too fat for the nest
the young cuckoo throws out
the other chicks -
I think about our follies,
our desperate greed


for Totally Optional Prompts

scifaiku

My prompt on Science Fiction poetry is now up at Read Write Poem - you can read it here! I'll be posting my response to the prompt here on Monday, but meanwhile here is a scifaiku I recently wrote (strange layout courtesy of Blogger!):

pewter sky glowers

over the leaden land -
red lightning

I posted another scifaiku over on Over Forty Shades, which you can read here.