A-Z Challenge - 'K'

My A-Z posts this year are based on my garden – flowers, animals, the birds and the bees, butterflies - with a bit of poetry thrown in. For some letters I am expecting to cheat somewhat – a sort of wish they were here.

K – Kestrel, Kite, Kingcup

‘K’ proved to be a problem letter until I remembered a common sight alongside Britain’s motorways.

Kestrel

 Up on the downs the red-eyed kestrels hover,

Eyeing the grass.

The field-mouse flits like a shadow into cover

As their shadows pass.

In our garden the only similar bird we see is the Sparrowhawk. The Red Kite another raptor is being reintroduced to many areas, but none near us. I shall have to make do with these instead:

Come fly a kite

I often sit and wish that I
Could be a kite up in the sky,
And ride upon the wind and go
Whichever way I chanced to blow.

Last year was the wettest for one hundred years in the UK. Parts of my garden became ideal for a member of the buttercup family which grows in marshy places.

Kingcups (Marsh Marigolds)

 And these cups for kings to hold

Made summer with their wide-eyed gold

Poems

• Up on the Downs – John Masefield
• The Kite – Anon
• Kingcups - Sacheverell Sitwell

Photo attributions:

• Kestrel - Andreas Trepte, www.photo-natur.de – CC BY-SA 2.5
• Kingcups – Keith Edkins – CC BY-SA 2.0 – Geograph project collection.