The human
Home is one of the seven, three-story apartment blocks arranged into an irregular rectangle alongside the Lea navigation canal in East London. In passing you might not see much beyond the bricks and parked cars. But sit for five minutes where the square meets the canal, and you’ll find an abundance of life.
The canal is a home and thoroughfare for gulls, geese, swans, cormorants, moorhens, coots, mallards, parakeets, crows, magpies, sparrows, tits, pigeons, and the occasional jay, woodpecker, kestrel, and kingfisher. We also have house martins nesting through the summer and a family of starlings living in the block by the entrance year-round. Just north, there’s a small wood and marshes that flood in the winter. It’s the most at home I’ve felt in my ten years in London.
I worry sometimes about the precariousness of all this life in a city. But if a kingfisher can find sprats in the murky canal, it must be an ecosystem embedded with a degree of stability.
The starling
Oh yeah. I see him. Most mornings. He steps out of his nest, sniffs the air, then walks over to where I perch, on this TV aerial, to hear me sing. I think he enjoys it. He smiles, and sometimes gets his phone out and taps on it.
It’s not for him though. I have to practice. I have to let my family and mate know I’m here, keeping watch, capable, and learning. They hear when I bring new sounds. Ringtones are good. Dogs, they find funny. But when I do other birds, it sometimes scares them.
I was brought up in the big park just to the west of here over the car river. Do you know it? Most of my sisters and brothers and their families still live there. We fly over sometimes and spend the afternoon with them, learning what they’ve been seeing and doing.
I found our nest here a few years ago. That’s the entrance, just over there, through those vents in the roof. It’s great. I have to ward off the occasional stranger bird, but it’s worth it. It’s warm at night. No rain. My mate loves it too. It’ll be our second brood here. In fact, you’ll be able to meet our new stares soon. They’ll be fledged in a couple of months.
The apartment blocks
Since 1991, brick-by-hand-built-brick, we’ve been here. Day after day, after day. We’ve seen families come and go. Couples love and break. People from all around the world and a hundred thousand birds (many migrating over our rooftops at night). Each day, we are here, holding and cradling life, in our burrows, in our eaves, and in our roofs, alongside our bankside hedgerows, and among the moss and lichen in the tarmac. We see it all and feel it all. The vibrations of life. The tunnelling, scampering and foraging. The conflicts and embraces. The prowling, hunting, and drifting. We even have our own climate, in miniature. Within our brick valley walls, heat spirals and coldness pools. We hide and contain your nature. Always here, watching, weathering, and waiting.
Part of a written submission for Granta’s Writing Nature workshop, 2025.