What choice if incarnation was on offer?! Very dashing to be a peregrine falcon; startlingly athletic flight, girdling the earth on lonely winter wanderings, and scaring the wits out of pigeons has much to commend it. But a peregrine's life is rather solitary and Serbian pigeon fanciers would try and shoot you if they could. Drinking tea on the door step was made even more of delight by the shining yellow-billed blackbird singing in the apple-tree blossom. Such liquid and glorious music; I'd give all the cherries in the orchard for his heavenly chant. There are many glorious songsters, but they seem a little too territorial or even primadona-ish. Between singing birds and cooing doves there is an almost constant strident chattering of sparrows. They live so close to us, under the eves, in holes in the walls, under our windows that a countryman would almost give up noticing them. From childhood sparrows chattered from the gutters under my attic window. One might be tempted to think that they are too argumentative. It is true that they do a lot of scrapping, but the way they fly in flocks to the safety of a thorn bush or crowd together in the dust it is clear that they are the most sociable people. All this noise is just vigorous conversation and lively debate. To be a sparrow has many material advantages. Those cosy crevices around village houses offer nests and shelter. Yards full of hens and turkeys provide plenty of pickings. Sparrow hawks are a menace but community spirit and a neighbourhood watch system provides pretty effective protection. But in this garden, and in the nesting box in the plum tree, we have Tree sparrows, the tan and white more beautiful and polite cousin of the House sparrow (Milan's pictures). Like me they like society but also prefer being outdoors and near trees. Our Lord, when he was a carpenter working in the yard must have amused himself listening to that excited and vigorous sparrow world. Perhaps he even kept pet sparrows in a cage in their home. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?” he said, “Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.......So don't be afraid; your are worth more than many sparrows.” Deep down we search for self worth, and the answer is there amongst the sparrows. Our worth lies in the Father's love.
7 April 2008 – A shared space
I was thrilled to discover that Stara Moravica has its own pair of nesting storks just below our house. Why they choose human habitation for nesting is something of a mystery. Even in sprawling Petrovaradin there is a huge stork's nest on an old chimney stack. And storks are surprisingly tame, quite happily feeding in meadows and marshes very close to habitation as well as building their nests right on top of your roof. One of the delights of village life is to recognize the many birds that happily take up post on top of roofs and trees by their songs. Green finches “wheezed” and yellow Serins “zizizizized”. Black redstarts sing from roofs all around with their sweet-gravelly song. I would dearly like the common redstart to nest in one of the bird boxes but they are late arrivals and not common like their black cousins. Swallows are around and I have left the window open into the stable for them to nest again. But our most honoured neighbour is the Little owl or kukumavka. With Šandor's vital assistance Milan and I have built a splendid nesting box for them and placed it up in a walnut. I have found pellets in our čardak (corn crib) and hear them every evening beyond the orchard. Many owls have close associations with man. Barn owls are spoilt for choice with the number of empty houses, all with large ventilation windows in the gable ends, but it is the Long-eared owl that chooses to congregate in the centre of Stara Moravica over the winter; in the twilight their shadowy silent flight can be glimpsed as they hunt for rodents around the edge of the village. Recent research is revealing how important owls are for reducing rodent damage to grain. During a twilight walk we found a Long-eared owl softly calling from his territory in the Catholic church yard. “Look at the birds of the air!” our Lord told us. They have much to teach us about the wholeness of things, about shared space.
6 April 2008 – The day of the grebe
Stara Moravica until now has not appeared on the “birding” map; that may be because its long valley lake running from the edge of the village is not on the map. The small village stream, home to kingfishers, was dammed some 3 km down stream. It is now a Trska reed and willow fringed lake meandering down its valley wide enough to feel like a lake but narrow enough in most places to see what is going on the other side. Milan, Mira and I set off by bicycle to see what was going on and soon had a long list. The Trska hasn't yet grown up, the willows are hardly in leaf, and many migrants have yet to arrive, but with a cold breeze and a bit of sun the world was beautiful. Sedge warblers, Reed warblers and Savvi's warblers all sang, mostly out of sight deep within last year's brown reeds. A large flock of dapper Pochards were chasing each other, a single Tufted duck was a surprise, a flock of shovelers was seen, and a small flock of newly arrived Garganey flew off; wonderful to think that they had just arrived from West Africa. Two bitterns “boomed” magically from their reed beds. Great egrets and grey herons had gathered to hunt for the emerging frogs. Marsh harriers hunted on the adjacent fields giving us a wonderful display flight as first the male and then the female dropped down into a nesting site. But in the end it was the day of the grebe.
Great crested grebes were displaying. Its a magical dance of shaking heads and sparring beaks that never ceases to thrill; and they are the most common grebe on the lake. That often elusive Little grebe was also present; they manage to disappear completely, hiding deep in vegetation, as soon as you want to watch them. But why was that flock of “coots” rafted together like that? They were very dark and behaved like small ducks keeping close together. When we got close we discovered them to be Black necked grebe. They are usually found all too briefly on migration from coastal wintering grounds and here we had not one but 2 flocks of about 20. Here the special feature of our village lake is that birds are always close enough to see them, and so it was that we noticed one bird that seemed a little larger than the others. It was hard to watch since it seemed to be the only individual diving to feed. But, now and again it showed pale flanks. Could it be? Thanks to a good camera lens we were able to examine it in detail back home on the laptop. Yes, we had recorded Serbia's first Horned grebe (Slavonian grebe)! It is not a vagrant by any means and certainly migrates through but there are no solid records. They bred on a loch close to home in the Scottish Highlands so I felt a sort of kinship with this pretty and rather scarce grebe. See Milan's report at <www.wild-serbia.com/slavonian_grebe.html> but it took a foreigner to spot it first!
5 April 2008 – Celebrating cob
Sorry to sound like advertising copy but our village house is too much of a joy to keep to ourselves. Incredible to us to think that 18 months ago the garden was a jungle and the house hadn't been lived in for 12 years. Now it has been renovated, carefully keeping the traditional salaš style, but not ignoring comfort and the convenience of cable internet. Thanks to the previous generation there were lots of pleasant surprises. So many tulips have broken out that we sometimes just stare with delight at the translucent yellows and reds soaking up the sun. Being a “wild gardener”, the worst sort of partner for serious plants people, I sow diverse collected seed and bury exciting tubers with joyful abandon and a memory shorter than a squirrel's. After our successful first year lots of seed is germinating and various exotic looking shoots are thrusting through the surface to meet the April sun. Scented blue zumbul heralded Spring, now shameless fritillaries are showing off spectacular flowers, and perennial friends are bursting out of the warming dark soil.
Spring is also the time for repairs. Traditional materials are ecologically sustainable and involve local craftsmen, but always need a bit more attention. Such is village life. A spring storm damaged some of our wall plaster so Laci dropped in to sort it out. Having looked around the yard and found a bag of corn chaff and a pile of sandy subsoil he was soon at work. The subsoil and chaff are mixed up with water to make what in Devon we call cob. We were left with strict instructions to keep it moist for a day so that it dried out gradually before painting. It looks beautiful, feels warm and the sparrows find it convenient if holes are left unattended. The alternative, universally advised by neighbours, is the all pervasive beton (cement). But how much energy is used to quarry the lime and bake the cement! The Balkan style is to pour cement in thousands of tonnes into fantastic shapes; walls, paths, stairs, roofs are all made in the deadly beton. A green tax would make them think a bit. Meanwhile Laci still knows how to work with cob, a deeply satisfying and sustainable material.
3 April 2008 – A world on the move
We are all supposed to be working or preparing for exams or doing something urgent, but migrating birds, banks of wild flowers and travelling flocks of sheep wait for no man. The season is marching forwards, the world is on the move, and one could miss it all in the parallel world of flickering computer screens. So Milan, Kaća and I took off in the early afternoon for the Fruška Gora, the forest national park close to home. Its an extraordinary feature of Serbia that you can drive a short distance and find an entirely new habitat that in the UK would be a Site of Special Scientific Interest enjoying robust protection and much interest. And so it was that we noticed a dry pastured valley stretching for several kilometres that we hadn't seen before. Picking our way through the usual fly-tipping and rubbish that such places attract, we entered a grassy corridor stretching far down into the arable lands. A colony of the rare and beautiful yellow Adonis caught our attention. A long winged rusty-backed buzzard flew off vigorously; my first ever Long-legged buzzard which might even breed there. There were some good sized badger setts that had escaped interference by badger baiters. Sky larks sang, Stonechats flicked from bush top to bush top, and everywhere Corn buntings “zizzzed” from their posts.
Approaching Kudoš lake it soon became apparent that the place was alive with birds. A Hen harrier was hunting aggressively, later joined by 3 Marsh harriers, flocks of Goldeneye were on the move, Teal filled the air with their whistling, a raft of Shovelers headed for more open water. Then we noticed the waders. Avocets, Black-winged stilts and Spotted redshanks were feeding on the margins. In fading light we happily turned for home but a final treat lay in store. On the way in I had noticed a cloud of dust in the distance; “wildebeest” mocked Milan knowing my talent for false alarms. I knew well what it was but reluctantly I carried on our way. Now on our return we ran right into a huge mob of sheep heading for the pasture beside the lake. But this was no ordinary scene. It is as old as the nomadic Vlah shepherds who probably preceded the coming of Slavic peoples. Who knows what their provenance is, but nomadic sheep herding still continues in a few places in Vojvodina. There was an old father wearing his šubara (sheep skin hat) and 3 sons with sunburnt faces, 4 donkeys carrying their tents, and 500 sheep with well grown lambs at foot. They pushed on with an urgency but I managed to find out that they had spent the winter in Banat roaming far over the stubbles amongst the cranes and wild fowl, and now they were almost home to their summer pasture on the Fruška Gora. Men “smelling of the field” and their Pulin dogs worked like a team. One lead in front, donkeys in the middle, father at the rear. At a road crossing they could hold the flock back until the way was clear before pouring across in minutes. Shaggy Balkan sheep with curly horns pushed forwards taking a bite of green as they went. Black and white lambs scampered to keep up. How on earth did they get that lot across both the Tisa and Danube rivers? I shall have to find them again!
Spring rituals don't always go smoothly. On the way in to the lake we noticed the perfectly secluded parking place between blossoming blackthorn for courting couples. On the way back a recently settled couple had their courtship disturbed by a posse of birders armed to the teeth with cameras. Unlucky to be disturbed at all in such a place but no sooner had we passed than 500 sheep, 3 donkeys and 4 “Vlahs” who hadn't seen their wives for 6 months came pushing past. Dosta (enough!) as they say. A small car with disgruntled pair hurtled past us in a cloud of dust heading for a new nesting site.
What choice if incarnation was on offer?! Very dashing to be a peregrine falcon; startlingly athletic flight, girdling the earth on lonely winter wanderings, and scaring the wits out of pigeons has much to commend it. But a peregrine's life is rather solitary and Serbian pigeon fanciers would try and shoot you if they could. Drinking tea on the door step was made even more of delight by the shining yellow-billed blackbird singing in the apple-tree blossom. Such liquid and glorious music; I'd give all the cherries in the orchard for his heavenly chant. There are many glorious songsters, but they seem a little too territorial or even primadona-ish. Between singing birds and cooing doves there is an almost constant strident chattering of sparrows. They live so close to us, under the eves, in holes in the walls, under our windows that a countryman 
would almost give up noticing them. From childhood sparrows chattered from the gutters under my attic window. One might be tempted to think that they are too argumentative. It is true that they do a lot of scrapping, but the way they fly in flocks to the safety of a thorn bush or crowd together in the dust it is clear that they are the most sociable people. All this noise is just vigorous conversation and lively debate. To be a sparrow has many material advantages. Those cosy crevices around village houses offer nests and shelter. Yards full of hens and turkeys provide plenty of pickings. Sparrow hawks are a menace but community spirit and a neighbourhood watch system provides pretty effective protection. But in this garden, and in the nesting box in the plum tree, we have Tree sparrows, the tan and white more beautiful and polite cousin of the House sparrow (Milan's pictures). Like me they like society but also prefer being 
outdoors and near trees. Our Lord, when he was a carpenter working in the yard must have amused himself listening to that excited and vigorous sparrow world. Perhaps he even kept pet sparrows in a cage in their home. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?” he said, “Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.......So don't be afraid; your are worth more than many sparrows.” Deep down we search for self worth, and the answer is there amongst the sparrows. Our worth lies in the Father's love.
I was thrilled to discover that Stara Moravica has its own pair of nesting storks just below our house. Why they choose human habitation for nesting is something of a mystery. Even in sprawling Petrovaradin there is a huge stork's nest on an old chimney stack. And storks are surprisingly tame, quite happily feeding in meadows and marshes very close to habitation as well as building their nests right on top of your roof. One of the delights of village life is to recognize the many birds that happily take up post on top of roofs and trees by their songs. Green finches “wheezed” and yellow Serins “zizizizized”. Black redstarts sing from roofs all around with their sweet-gravelly song. I would dearly like the common redstart to nest in one of the bird boxes but they are late arrivals and not common like their black cousins. Swallows are around and I have left the window open into the stable for them to 
nest again. But our most honoured neighbour is the Little owl or kukumavka. With Šandor's vital assistance Milan and I have built a splendid nesting box for them and placed it up in a walnut. I have found pellets in our čardak (corn crib) and hear them every evening beyond the orchard. Many owls have close associations with man. Barn owls are spoilt for choice with the number of empty houses, all with large ventilation windows in the gable ends, but it is the Lon
g-eared owl that chooses to congregate in the centre of Stara Moravica over the winter; in the twilight their shadowy silent flight can be glimpsed as they hunt for rodents around the edge of the village. Recent research is revealing how important owls are for reducing rodent damage to grain. During a twilight walk we found a Long-eared owl softly calling from his territory in the Catholic church yard. “Look at the birds of the air!” our Lord told us. They have much to teach us about the wholeness of things, about shared space.
Stara Moravica until now has not appeared on the “birding” map; that may be because its long valley lake running from the edge of the village is not on the map. The small village stream, home to kingfishers, was dammed some 3 km down stream. It is now a Trska reed and willow fringed lake meandering down its valley wide enough to feel like a lake but narrow enough in most places to see what is going on the other side. Milan, Mira and I set off by bicycle to see what was going on and soon had a long list. The Trska hasn't yet grown up, the willows are hardly in leaf, and many migrants have yet to arrive, but with a cold breeze and a bit of sun the world was beautiful. Sedge warblers, Reed warblers and Savvi's warblers all sang, mostly out of sight deep within last year's brown reeds. A large flock of dapper Pochards were chasing each other, a single Tufted duck was a surprise, a flock of shovelers was seen, and a small flock of newly arrived Garganey flew off; wonderful to think that they had just arrived from West Africa. Two bitterns “boomed” magically from their reed beds. Great egrets and grey herons had gathered to hunt for the emerging frogs. Marsh harriers hunted on the adjacent fields giving us a wonderful display flight as first the male and then the female dropped down into a nesting site. But in the end it was the day of the grebe.
Great crested grebes were displaying. Its a magical dance of shaking heads and sparring beaks that never ceases to thrill; and they are the most common grebe on the lake. That often elusive Little grebe was also present; they manage to disappear completely, hiding deep in vegetation, as soon as you want to watch them. But why was that flock of “coots” rafted together like that? They were very dark and behaved like small ducks keeping close together. When we got close we discovered them to be Black necked grebe. They are usually found all too briefly on migration from
coastal wintering grounds and here we had not one but 2 flocks of about 20. Here the special feature of our village lake is that birds are always close enough to see them, and so it was that we noticed one bird that seemed a little larger than the others. It was hard to watch since it seemed to be the only individual diving to feed. But, now and again it showed pale flanks. Could it be? Thanks to a good camera lens we were able to examine it in detail back home on the laptop. Yes, we had recorded Serbia's first Horned grebe (Slavonian grebe)! It is not a vagrant by any means and certainly migrates through but there are no solid records. They bred on a loch close to home in the Scottish Highlands so I felt a sort of kinship with this pretty and rather scarce grebe. See Milan's report at <
Sorry to sound like advertising copy but our village house is too much of a joy to keep to ourselves. Incredible to us to think that 18 months ago the garden was a jungle and the house hadn't been lived in for 12 years. Now it has been renovated, carefully keeping the traditional salaš style, but not ignoring comfort and the convenience of cable internet. Thanks to the previous generation there 
were lots of pleasant surprises. So many tulips have broken out that we sometimes just stare with delight at the translucent yellows and reds soaking up the sun. Being a “wild gardener”, the worst sort of partner for serious plants people, I sow diverse collected seed and bury exciting tubers with joyful abandon and a memory shorter than a squirrel's. After our successful first year lots of seed is germinating and various exotic looking shoots are thrusting through the surface to meet the April sun. Scented blue zumbul heralded Spring, now shameless fritillaries are showing off spectacular flowers, and perennial friends are bursting out of the warming dark soil.
Spring is also the time for repairs. Traditional materials are ecologically sustainable and involve local craftsmen, but always need a bit more attention. Such is village life. A spring storm damaged some of our wall plaster so Laci dropped in to sort it out. Having looked around the yard and found a bag of corn chaff and a pile of sandy subsoil he was soon at work. The subsoil and chaff are mixed up with water to make what in Devon we call cob. We were left with strict instructions to 
keep it moist for a day so that it dried out gradually before painting. It looks beautiful, feels warm and the sparrows find it convenient if holes are left unattended. The alternative, universally advised by neighbours, is the all pervasive beton (cement). But how much energy is used to quarry the lime and bake the cement! The Balkan style is to pour cement in thousands of tonnes into fantastic shapes; walls, paths, stairs, roofs are all made in the deadly beton. A green tax would make them think a bit. Meanwhile Laci still knows how to work with cob, a deeply satisfying and sustainable material.
We are all supposed to be working or preparing for exams or doing something urgent, but migrating birds, banks of wild flowers and travelling flocks of sheep wait for no man. The season is marching forwards, the world is on the move, and one could miss it all in the parallel world of flickering computer screens. So Milan, Kaća and I took off in the early afternoon for the Fruška Gora, the forest national park close to home. Its an 
extraordinary feature of Serbia that you can drive a short distance and find an entirely new habitat that in the UK would be a Site of Special Scientific Interest enjoying robust protection and much interest. And so it was that we noticed a dry pastured valley stretching for several kilometres that we hadn't seen 
before. Picking our way through the usual fly-tipping and rubbish that such places attract, we entered a grassy corridor stretching far down into the arable lands. A colony of the rare and beautiful yellow Adonis caught our attention. A long winged rusty-backed buzzard flew off vigorously; my first ever Long-legged buzzard which might even breed there. There were some good sized badger setts that had escaped interference by badger baiters. Sky larks sang, Stonechats flicked from bush top to bush top, and everywhere Corn buntings “zizzzed” from their posts. 
reluctantly I carried on our way. Now on our return we ran right into a huge mob of sheep heading for the pasture beside the lake. But this was no ordinary scene. It is as old as the nomadic Vlah shepherds who probably preceded the coming of Slavic peoples. Who knows what their provenance is, but nomadic sheep herding still continues in a few places in Vojvodina. There was an old father wearing his šubara (sheep skin hat) and 3 sons with sunburnt faces, 4 donkeys carrying their tents, and 500 sheep with well grown lambs at foot. They pushed on with an urgency but I managed to find out that they had spent the winter in Banat roaming far over the stubbles amongst the cranes and wild fowl, and now they were almost home to their summer pasture on the Fruška Gora. 
Men “smelling of the field” and their Pulin dogs worked like a team. One lead in front, donkeys in the middle, father at the rear. At a road crossing they could hold the flock back until the way was clear before pouring across in minutes. Shaggy Balkan sheep with curly horns pushed forwards taking a bite of green as they went. Black and white lambs scampered to keep up. How on earth did they get that lot across both the Tisa and Danube rivers? I shall have to find them again!