Detail Diary, Vol #26
Look up, look down, look around, listen
February 2025
Dear friend,
It’s been a weird, difficult month in the world. Some days I lost the thread a bit and forgot to look around. But things are flowering around here, the ground is going buttery with primroses and violets, birds are coaxing out leafbuds with songs, rooks are consulting together over their nests high up in the rookery, a few brave bumblebees are even bopping around—and I remember. I relive last year’s rituals of visiting the last snowdrops under the plane trees and listening to the tiny yellow petals of the cornelian cherry rain like lemon zest onto the leaf litter. (The cornelian cherry/cornel/dogwood features no fewer than four times in this month’s diary.) I listen to liquid chatter of robins and blackcaps and the buzzy talk of siskins. I map the countries of treebark and lichen, the forests of moss. I bask in the sun like a cat.
It’s all necessary.
I also went on a few excursions: a stroll through the seedheads along the river, walks through quiet, half-decaying neighborhoods, a weekend birding trip in the south of France on the edge of the marshy, salty expanse of the Camargue.
Read on for the details—and don’t forget to look up, down, around, zoom in, zoom out.
Some birds to listen to in the meantime:
European robins, blackcaps, siskins
Two European blackbirds counter-singing; chiffchaff “chiff-chaffing” (at 22s)
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🌱 For an introduction to my Detail Diary, see here, or peruse past volumes. 🌱
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Micro-monde: Do you ever pause, and in that pause, find that the vague idea of, say, a stone wall in your peripheral vision has suddenly slid you into a whole parallel micro-universe of detail? Hard to believe this alternate dimension was there the whole time—and that the portal is always standing open.
Learn more about gymnosperms in the latest pair of Flora alpina posts: Conifers I and Conifers II
A weekend birding trip near the Camargue
Specifically, Petite-Camargue. (more details may eventually make it into a feature post…)
More rookery:
Stunning photos. Thank you Anne! So uplifting!
Grazie Anne, che belle parole quelle hai scritto per introdurre questo post riassuntivo del mese di febbraio!
Merci beaucoup, thank you so much dear Anne!