Tuesday 23 June
“Stop looking at other people’s trees, Dad.” Adora can be very direct and I love her straight, no-nonsense approach. Out on our dog walk this evening, she had clearly had enough of me staring up at the tops of trees. Especially one’s that are in our neighbours’ gardens.
The reason for this visual frisking was that the Song Thrush, that sings poems (see Day 81), had moved temporarily across the wheat field and orchard to take up a high point on top of a silver birch in the front garden of number 1.
He had been in his usual tree on the lane but obviously fancied a bit of a change. And why not? Especially as he would seem to have not been particularly successful with the ladies to date (I maybe wrong). I now refer to his usual tree as the singing tree for obvious reasons. By giving names to our local landmarks I feel, as a family, we can recount events and journeys using clearly identifiable locations.
“Where did you take the dog this evening?”
“Oh, we just went up past the dead-fox ditch to the singing tree and back.”
It’s special that these names only really mean something to us. The rest of the world is not part of our club.
I drove to Heybridge again today in the beautiful summer sunshine. The A12 continues to get busier but no ‘weight of traffic’ hold-ups as yet. Turning up there this morning, after writing yeaterday’s post, I was reminded again that there is something special in the air. It is an almost mystical locality and I am going to learn more about it through a combination of research and simply walking around it. I might even get the Gentleman’s Film & Leisure Club to do a walk.
A good friend of mine, now living north of the border, recommended a book to me a few years ago. The memoirs of an ordinary man from Chelmsford who repeatedly, obsessively, tracked Peregrines across the countryside from his home down to the Blackwater estuary. He did this across the Autumn and Winter months of the mid to late 1960s. A very different time.
The book affected me and the way I now view the natural world. It also changed the relationship I have with this region. Not just Essex but the whole of East Anglia. I feel part of this region and much more a part of the natural world as a result of this book.
Here’s a link to the BBC’s serialisation of J A Baker’s masterpiece of nature writing ‘The Peregrine’. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough.
The Bald Birder 