Room with a flue

Sunday, 13 April 2025

A sparrow on Mike White’s chimney. It’s unclear if this was the lodger, or a visiting friend.

Mike White is a senior writer and columnist for the Sunday Star-Times.

OPINION: I had been aware of the squatter for some time.

She had arrived in late spring, as frosts fired parting shots, and winter’s denuded trees woke and stretched and rubbed their eyes.

She set up home without asking.

In the chimney.

To be honest, I’m still not sure if she was a blackbird or a starling or sparrow.

To be honest, I don’t even know if it was a she: I treated this as a property issue rather than an ornithological study.

But as the days lengthened, I’d walk out the front door with the dog for his morning walk, and there’d be a flurry and a flutter and away would go the bird from the chimney behind me.

Sometimes if it didn’t notice me, it would remain perched in silhouette on the chimney’s edge, and sing a happy morning song.

Initially, I thought maybe it was just sitting there for the view, a magnificent lookout, first to see the sun breach the surrounding hills’ defences.

But then I noticed a tuft of grass protruding from the chimney’s mouth. Then another.

They quivered and twisted in the wind, and gave lie to industry occurring below.

At night, as I watered ailing trees, I’d see the bird swoop from somewhere in the dusk and land on the chimney’s metal rim. Then, it would gently settle below the surface, and disappear.

That was when I knew for sure we had a tenant in what had been refashioned as an avian attic.

The issue of rent never arose.

I was happy to hear merry chirruping as recompense for board.

It’s not like I was having to leave a tray with continental breakfast outside its door every morning.

But there was an obvious catch: it was a short-term tenancy. Six months at most.

The bird’s nest wasn’t an architectural wonder like this one that blew from Mike White’s trees. But it was still home for the bird.

Come autumn and dipping temperatures, the arrangement would have to end, and we’d need the chimney back.

Even charity has sub-clauses.

Past the equinox, past March, as evenings have cooled, we’ve begun glancing at the log burner and running a sweep on when we’ll first light it.

With this in mind, I dragged out the stepladder, leant it squarely against the gutter, and clambered onto the roof. The nest had to go.

It was mid-afternoon, but my steps across the iron were cautious, stealth in gumboots, in case the bird was having a siesta.

But no, nobody was home, just the tufts I’d spied from below, and a fistful of bleached grass.

As I pulled this out, however, I noticed a much larger thatch, under a flange in the chimney.

The bird had built a split-level condo: upstairs for daylight dallying, downstairs for a good night’s sleep.

Handful after handful of grass and straw came out, like a magician’s endless silk handkerchief. I reached down as far as I could and there was still more.

When I’d gathered as much as I could, a small tumbleweed lay on the driveway below.

I inspected it closely: Grass I’d yanked out from between the shrubs; tufts of herbs; twists of twiggery; small balls of dog hair; filched string we’d used to tie up the tomatoes.

It was the kind of thing some anti-capitalist yet entrepreneurial hippie would have stitched in muslin, and hawked as a pot-pourri at a farmers’ market.

I was full of admiration.

And sadness.

I felt wretched I’d so brutally, so instantly, destroyed the bird’s home.

Images of tin and tarpaulin shanty-towns being flattened by bulldozers filled my head. I was like one of those cold functionaries moving homeless people from inner-city streets because of upcoming Olympic Games.

Starling sits in the old cypress tree. Because Mike White has destroyed its nest.

My only consolation was that I’d not seen the bird for weeks, and figured she had relocated to the swaying cool of the silver birch trees, after her chicks flew the flue.

And besides, I told myself, if I light a fire with the nest still in it, I’ll burn both our houses down, or worse, ignite a village firestorm with drifting embers.

But still, guilt shadowed me as I stored the ladder and kicked off my gumboots.

I’d altered the natural world’s balance and would pay. Karma would catch and clutch me.

The next morning, I noticed a duck sitting on the letterbox at number 27. It was a new adornment, and was fake, but I swear its head swivelled to glare at me as I walked past with the dog.

While hacking back the rhubarb patch, three fantails suddenly surrounded me, cheeping, chastising, harassing, darting ever closer with reproach and accusation.

The following day, I heard a metallic tinkling from above, shot out, and looked up at the roof.

There was a bird, sitting on the chimney’s top.

It gave three mournful chirrups, and flew away to the top of the tallest tree in our garden.

It was a starling.

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