Talk to me

A YEAR after Alma died, Tony found a jackdaw dead in a snare. It upset him more because he and Alma had liked to watch a pair of jackdaws nesting in the tumbledown eaves of their outbuilding, which they had inherited with the house when they moved to Dorset.

At the time, seduced by TV programmes such as “Escape To The Country”, they’d planned to turn the outbuilding into a studio for Alma’s watercolour painting.

Alma did set up her easel in there after Tony patched the roof, but she complained that it was always cold, even with a heater on full blast.

And while he drew up plans to give the building a proper makeover, she began to feel ill and wanted to stay cosy in the house.

After that, they’d let the building fall into greater disrepair and congratulated themselves on gifting it to wildlife.

One year, swallows. The next, barn owls.

Then came Claude and Annie, the jackdaw couple.

Alma named them after a book she’d had as a child, about a pair of mischievous but likeable schoolchildren who generally caused mild consternation rather than havoc.

Claude and Annie arrived to build their nest just as Alma’s illness worsened.

Tony bought her binoculars so she could watch them fly in and out of the eaves.

“They mate for life,” she informed him after browsing online. “Did you know that they like to make eye contact with people and can recognise faces?”

At that point, Tony felt rather ambivalent towards the natural world.

He only wanted Alma to get better.

So when he found the dead jackdaw a year after losing her, his grief was really for himself, he knew.

He found the poor bird in a hedgerow on one of his morning walks along country lanes, the slim wire still round its neck.

He shook his head and freed the poor thing from the snare, then laid it gently to earth, covered in leaves.

A sudden fluttering made him look up.

Another jackdaw was perched in the hedge, looking at him with a bright, curious eye.

“Now I’m very sorry if this is your other half,” Tony told it. “Life happens, you know. Or so people keep telling me.

“Well, good day to you now.” He tipped his waterproof hood and went on his way.

Actually, it was a sunny, blustery day, but the weather could change quicker than he could snap his fingers.

He’d got used to passing locals who’d glance at his thin-soled feet and tut, while