WATCHING BIRDS AS A CHILD IN LONDON

Posted: 03.02.25 in Articles category

EVEN SPARROWS WEBSITE ARTICLE FOR FEBRUARY 2025

Our article this month is another in our series written by various friends who enjoy watching birds and try to relate that interest to their personal Christian faith. I met Sister Gloria on an Even Sparrows retreat at Launde Abbey as she explains.

 WATCHING BIRDS AS A CHILD IN LONDON

I grew up in Central London on busy main road in a flat that looked out onto the backs of brick buildings. I must have been around six or seven when I used to push a footstool up against the living room window to gaze out, not at the vista of bricks and mortar, but at the one little tree which grew beside a low brick wall beneath the window. Along this wall an occasional pigeon would walk before flying into the tree. Thus began my love of birdwatching. Feeding the birds in the local park introduced me to the sparrows and starlings. A Christmas gift from an aunt one year – an annual all about animals and birds – with photos of such exotic creatures as lapwing, golden plover and curlew, sowed a seed of hope that I might one day see such wondrous creatures.

As an adult, living on the Kent coast for two years enabled me to see the magnificent kestrels that once hovered so regularly along the chalk cliffs there. A spell in Hounslow, West London, introduced me to the amazing herons that inhabit the willows along the river at Isleworth. A longer spell in the Channel Islands enabled me to delight in the swallows and house martins that arrived every spring and flew around the fields all summer.

Fast forward to 2023 and I managed to get a place on the Even Sparrows retreat at Launde Abbey. Being a member of a religious congregation (hence all the movement!) we usually make an annual retreat in the Ignatian tradition but since I’ve always had a special love for St. Francis of Assisi, I’m often drawn to a more Franciscan way of praying, especially in praise of all created things. As Pope Francis says in his wonderful letter Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home, “St. Francis’ response to the world around him was so much more than intellectual appreciation or economic calculus, for to him, each and every creature was a sister united to him by bonds of affection.” I think I feel some of this affection for every bird I see or hear.

Thanks to the rail strikes at the time, I had to stay on an extra day in Launde Abbey, which enabled me to linger out by the fields all evening, in the hope of seeing the barn owl which had eluded us all week. I wasn’t disappointed. After a long wait in the cold wind, this white form emerged from the gloom and flew towards me as I stood transfixed, holding my breath, as it glided silently past me on its hunting mission. I felt ecstatic. What is it that touches us so deeply when we are granted a close encounter with a wild creature?

Gloria Calabrese fcJ (Faithful Companion of Jesus)