workshop · exposed rafters, blackened oak · jackdaws, a tribe
the workshop has the building's plainest roof and its noisiest eave. the rafter ends are exposed, never trimmed back behind a facia; the carpenter who built it (also the carpenter who used it for the next forty years) felt the underside of a roof should be visible from inside or you forgot how a roof worked. all thirteen rafter tails stick out like the teeth of a comb.
between each pair of rafters lives a household. jackdaws have colonised the workshop eave in a manner the verger of the chapel would never tolerate but the smith of the workshop encourages. they call all year, hoarse and conversational, beginning at first light and pausing about an hour past noon. when the forge is lit they sit on the rafter ends like a row of witnesses. small bright things vanish from the bench below: a tinned washer, a length of wire, once a sixpence.
in winter the eave is hung with icicles in the shape of the rafters; in summer with a fine grey moss between them. swallows have tried once, twice, three times to nest here and have given up each time, the jackdaws being the older claim. the smith leaves a saucer of water on the ledge of the workshop window. it is not for the jackdaws. they drink from it anyway.
field-note · workshop one rafter end (the seventh, from the left) is paler than the others. the jackdaws perch there least often; the smith struck it once with a hammer in temper and the wood, somehow, has been wary ever since.
jackdaw workshop, image north eave dormer edge rain on slate