I was watching some birds on the rooftops opposite my house.
A crow sat on a chimney at one end. A couple of sparrows were pecking at the moss, and then a group of starlings settled along the ridge. None seemed to pay much attention to the others. They carried on with whatever they were doing.
It reminded me of a documentary showing animals gathered around a watering hole in Africa. They shared the water, but there were still separate groups, each getting on with their own lives.
We often talk about feeling separate from nature. Even the way we describe it makes it sound like somewhere else. We go out into the natural world, then come home again.
But I wonder what we expect belonging to it to feel like.
Looking down over those plains, we would see elephants with elephants, zebras with zebras. Put a group of people in that view and perhaps we wouldn’t look so unusual.
We have different ways of communicating, different routines, different things that matter to us. I could watch the birds from my window, but there was plenty about their morning I wouldn’t understand. I’ve no idea what, if anything, they made of mine.
Maybe we feel separate from other things because we are, and perhaps we are not the only ones.
