Wings flit over meadows, feathers blend with flowers under morning light. Calls piercing the woods, chicks ask their due of parents and life, to be fed, to be aided, soon knowing their skills, soon leaving, their voices melting into thick August air.

Grass stands tallest, seed-heads heavy, waiting for the breeze to scatter their crop. Like feathered gnomes, tawny chicks are hopping from mossy branch to branch, learning to hunt as parents watch with dark, marbled eyes. A little less close each day, parents and chicks circle farther. Distant solitary patches of fir beckon, perches of sycamore and beech. Where will the winds take them now? Where will tomorrow’s trees will stand tall?

Spring’s work has found its way into the great web of life, spun in toughest silk, strong yet unobtrusive, simply, solidly woven with strands of different ilk, all reaching out for past and future, touched by today’s sun. However far they fly, they once were a note to a tune of forests and fells, someday to return, or forever an echo, framed in woodland wonder.