This evening when I got home from work I noticed one of the neighbour's cats crouched in my back garden. It wasn't its usual daydreamy manner of sitting but it seemed sternly hunched, its body taut. When I went over it it sloped a short distance away, keeping close to the ground, staring back over its shoulder.
This summer a pair of wood pigeons have been nesting in one of the disused chimney pots on next door's roof - I can't figure out how they both squeeze down in there but they found a way. Yesterday afternoon I noticed for the first time two young birds had appeared - a family now! The 'fledglings' stood together on the next chimney along - so they'd made it that far - and were taking in the view beneath them and looking slightly overwhelmed by the neighbourhood stretching out below and above them. If I was one of those birds I'd be more than slightly anxious about my first few attempts at flight. The first short hop might have been a lucky success but perhaps the next leap could be all the way down. Birds must have to leap those first few times like a gambler throwing dice, fully open to the possibility of failure. They stood like kids who had climbed up to the top diving board at a swimming pool and who hoped no-one had noticed their ascent as they dallied, wondering what they were doing there.
So, yes, in my garden today were the remains of one of the young birds. A ruffled wing, a scattering of grey and white feathers, part of the torso, bloody and bony, and a decapitated head with the oesophagus attached like a dried up worm. The head was unexpectedly small, with a tiny dark eye, as if still watching the world from its unique vantage point.