{"id":1019,"date":"2011-09-07T21:04:10","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T19:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/howtogoon.com\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2011-09-08T08:38:16","modified_gmt":"2011-09-08T06:38:16","slug":"alcedo-atthis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/2011\/09\/07\/alcedo-atthis\/","title":{"rendered":"Alcedo Atthis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have finally managed to stop sobbing. For an hour I sat with the still warm body of a kingfisher in my hand, its blood slowly sticking my fingers together.<br \/>\nA special bird, its splash as it dived after a fish from its perch on the toppled velvet tree which overhangs the water, announced its presence more often than the treasured sight of its blue flash as I sat drinking early morning coffee under the larch.<br \/>\nBut now it\u2019s dead. <a rel=\"attachment wp-att-1015\" href=\"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/alcedo-atthis\/kingfisher\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1015\" title=\"kingfisher\" src=\"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/kingfisher.gif\" alt=\"kingfisher\" width=\"425\" height=\"567\" srcset=\"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/kingfisher.gif 425w, https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/kingfisher-224x300.gif 224w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 425px) 100vw, 425px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was drinking coffee indoors this time, for the morning was a bluster of showers, when there was a loud thud against the glass doors, very close, making me jump. I didn\u2019t expect a corpse, I imagined the bird \u2013 I hoped a stupid bloody wood pigeon \u2013 to have flown off a little dazed perhaps, but not seriously harmed, so I finished the page I was on and then, as the sun appeared, stepped out to open up. There, lying on the ground was a bright turquoise bird. Why why why? Why must it be the kingfisher? I spend the next 10minutes clutching its warm limp, body to my breast, rocking it back and forth, stoking its tiny head.<\/p>\n<p>I am aware that my distress is out of proportion, that somehow the death of this tiny, precious bird has triggered something else. Perhaps somehow connecting to a sense of the death of small and precious things on a larger scale.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/alcedo-atthis\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have finally managed to stop sobbing. For an hour I sat with the still warm body of a kingfisher in my hand, its blood slowly sticking my fingers together. A special bird, its splash as it dived after a fish from its perch on the toppled velvet tree which overhangs the water, announced its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1050,"href":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}