Patch

1st June 2021

The sun is warming the windows and walls and there is a cacophony of birdsong outside. Without the use of any app or website I can clearly make out at least one blackbird, many rooks, a robin and a song thrush. Over the past year or so I have become much better at recognising bird song, an aspect of bird identification that I had always been weak, which is a sign of how I have attuned all of my senses to the world around me.

It is the Friday of the summer half-term and alongside the usual life-maintenance that we have to do during our breaks, I have decided to continue with my blog. Chapter one was three-hundred and sixty-five days long. It started when the UK went into the first coronavirus lockdown back in March 2020 and finished a year later, whilst we were still deeply entrenched in lockdown number three. A couple of months on and most of the adult population have been vaccinated. The pubs are open and there is a quiet optimism about the future. But, variants of the virus loom in patches of the world and across the UK. Foreign travel is reluctantly managed through amber and red lists of countries to be avoided, and self-isolation at home is still a legal requirement if you become infected.

So, chapter two.

I step out of the shower and open the bathroom window wider letting the warm breeze in and along with it the very welcome sound of the buzzard. Over the past couple of weeks, the raptor family-of-three had been noticeable by there absence. Their bulky bodies circling above the orchard at the back of our house had been a mainstay throughout the year with only the occasional day or two when they hunted over adjacent fields. Their most recent disappearance had coincided with the arrival of at least thirty or so rooks. These shadowy figures had taken up residency amongst the apple trees and in the tall poplars that fringe most northerly strip of trees between the lake and the orchard. These winged silhouettes glide low and slow over and between the rows of fruit trees, now minus their pale pink blossom. As a posse, they seem to rarely fly much higher than the poplars, ‘cawking’ loudly and repeatedly as the bunch together. It is quite an imposing sight and sound, and I wonder if they may have bullied the buzzards out of their own patch. But this morning, I hear a solitary cry from a single bird, too high to be seen in the bright morning sky, and I smile.

We are deep into what has been a late budding spring. The citrus green leaves on the trees are now out in full (pretty much) and the grass in meadows is noticeably longer with each dog walk. We have had the coldest April since 1922 and one of the wettest May’s on record. Finally, towards the end of the month, the cold easterly winds became warmer southerlies and on these much welcomed and cheerful breezes came spring, swallows and swifts. Finally.

My primary patch, which I am going to dive most deeply into over the coming weeks and months, radiates one kilometre from my house in all directions. But, its the southern section that I feel will take up most of my time and includes a range of habitats; hedgerows, arable fields, woodland copse, grassy scrub and meadows, apple orchards and a fishing lake. My secondary patch will spread three kilometres out and takes in Ardleigh village and the reservoir to the west, St Mary’s Church in Lawford to the east, to the edge of Dedham village to the north and nowhere in particular to the south. But within this space, I have learnt that there is always something interesting to find in a hedgerow or scrub, under a stone or leaf or on a telegraph pole or roof. There is a story behind the buildings, the roads and the paths. Names, lives lived, marks made.

It is the afternoon now, and after a week of warmth and sunshine, it is raining. This is only going to make the vegetation more lush and green. But in this past week, finally the fuse for an explosive spring and summer has been lit and the connections between everything are all there, ready to be observed and marvelled at.