If your senses grow soft and stay sharp enough, you can feel yourself slipping between worlds and into wonder. The noise of our built environs, its grinding cogs of industry and inhumanity give way. The soft animal of your body, finely tuned and well eqipped to perceive magic, can intuit its rippling margins. Without warning or care you can find yourself delightfully beholden to its everyday miracles.

I was chatting with this old bird today and he told me a story from once upon a time in my backyard. In the beginning when his kind had arrived to this lush paradise, he gestured wildly with his wing, life was simple. They ate. They squawked. They flew. They slept.

Monday meditation brought to you by the starlings that live in UK nature sanctuary Minsmere. This is hands down my favourite natural phenomenon, one I have been lucky enough to witness with my own eyes many moons ago, way out west as the sun was setting over open plains.