Country diary: my baby and I move through different landscapes

Airedale, West Yorkshire:My six-week-old daughter still can ’t see very well, but her sense of smell is fierce, and we can both hear the magpies, which are everywhereShe ’s only six weeks old but I’m sure she can smell the smothering perfume of the rosebay willowherb that crowds the lake edge. A new baby’s senses develop lopsidedly, out-of-sync: our daughter’s eyesight is still finding focus – she can’t see the wood pigeons bombing across the pale dishwa ter sky, framed by the edges of her pram – but her sense of smell is fierce. This unfamiliar air, for her, must be rich in plant odour. The greenery everywhere is dense, weighty and dull-looking: rangy flowers of fodder radish; milk-white gramophone trumpets of bindweed; teasel-heads, deliciously crisp and sharp; young rowans bowed by the weight of their October berry-crops; reed beds top-heavy with feathery flowers. Elders flash their pale underleaves in the stiff breeze.We grownups can ’t smell much of anything over the willowherb – but I see a redwing, skipping in flight like a stone spun across pond water, in the middle distance, and a jay bounding up from the side of the path, a little cameo of peach, blue and black against the army green. We and our daughter move through q uite different landscapes.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Autumn Biology Children Birds Yorkshire Environment Rural affairs Plants Trees and forests Animals UK news Wildlife Science Society Source Type: news