The Dead Tree
In the centre of the little wood, where I often used to go to gather nuts or pick blackberries a few years back, there stands an old dead tree. It is a chestnut, I think. The wind and the rain have both contributed to strip it of its bark and make it bald and grey, and, as the trees around it are all chestnuts. I take it to be one. It has become more loved by the birds than any other tree in the wood. The pigeons use it as a look-out because few branches and no leaves obscure their view. The small birds, tits and tree-creepers search its crevices for insects; the woodpecker sounds the trunk with his beak, and the magpies pitch themselves up from the ground and chatter from its naked arms. After each gale I wonder if it has survived, as I wondered last week. Even if it weathers the storm, sooner or later a forestry man will survey the wood and recommend that the old tree be brought down and something of the character of that group of chest- nuts will be taken away.
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