Stillness Kestrel | Falco tinnunculus

A New Year walk along hilltop grassland being watched from afar

Today is a new year. A still and lightly misted morning on the day after the Winter Solstice. The shortest day of the year has come and gone, Planet Earth moved past one apex of its orbit, when the North Pole is angled furthest from the sun. Today has fractionally more daylight, tomorrow a little more. Daffodils and snowdrops poke through the ground to catch the light in our garden, hellebore flower stems stretching upward.

But I’m not in our garden, I’m out for a walk to find the kestrel. I see it whenever I don’t have my camera. When I take my camera the kestrel is nowhere. I am the worst wild bird photographer in the world.

It doesn’t stop me and today I start my mission to photograph the kestrel. Setting out along moor-side grasslands, waiting for its shape or movement. Often it will sit there, on a wooden pole looking at me, unbothered.

Once I caught the kestrel off guard while I photographed nuts from inside a tree. It too flew into the canopy to perch only to find me, about turning a few feet from my face, shouting at me quietly before flying off silently.

As I walk, a small flock of geese call from behind before flying overhead and out across the valley. The call feels aimed at me, an acknowledgement. Turning to continue, I see it, the kestrel, flying out from the heather and bilberry.

Kicking myself slightly because this is what happened the other week in exactly the same spot. This time I keep my eyes on its path and tread carefully around the brow of the hill it flew over and sure enough, its body is silhouetted on a fence post.

I photograph the kestrel and we spend a few minutes looking at each other before it flies on again.

I think for a moment about the year ahead in the stillness of this morning. The hill opposite feels larger today, impossibly large. Holding its moor high in the sky. It’s hard not to reflect on our lives at this time of year when the world around us slows or stops.

Whether we like making new year resolutions or not, I don’t know many who don’t reassess how things are going at this time of year. It’s good to be positive, dwell on the ups and the successes, they’re part of our story. What are our hopes and dreams, what is the first step toward them?

My world is a chaos of writing, photography, gardening and increasingly painting and drawing. All tied to nature, a way to express my awe and love for the natural world. In the year ahead I’d like to press on with each of these art forms, inching forward with new ideas that lead to incremental improvements in what my hands can make.

I keep coming back to the idea of a return to education, something related to ecology, but where to start? Perhaps all I need to do this year is find out what that first step would be.

There’s the kestrel again, I notice it at the top of the naked tree. Perched on the highest twig defying gravity. Branches and stems against a watercolour sky. The kestrel watches me between scans of the ground.

Wishing you all a very happy holiday and year ahead. As always, thank you for your support and comments across the last year.

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