Ashamed

4th September 2021

I am ashamed, it has been months since I decided to restart posting. There were a number of reasons why I decided to start writing this blog again. One significant reason was that it helped me forge a balance in my life. A balance between work and the all too consuming day-to-day hubbub of life, and the things that matter the most and make me happier. Alas, I have failed at the first hurdle with chores and hubbub preventing me from getting out there and enjoying that amazing time of the year we call summer. But, and here’s the beauty of this, I can write whenever I want. There are no rules. So, brakes off, relax.

Life has been frantic, and at a time when theoretically it should be less so. The weeks and months leading up to the summer break, basically the whole of August, I allowed work to smother me at times. We have made many changes to how we plan to do things come September and the start of the new academic year. I knew it would be easier and more rewarding in the long-term but it took its toll and so I started the summer holiday with a feeling of having survived 2020/21.

Then August arrived and we went away, in the UK, as did pretty much everyone else who could afford to. We were very lucky and went camping in Suffolk with friends and also took our annual pilgrimage to the north Norfolk coast. Then back to complete the jobs that had been saved up during the year as well as all the other bits and bobs that present themselves only when you have time to slow down and see them in front if you.

So, despite me thinking I could start my blog during the long summer weeks away from work, here I am writing the second post at the end of my first week back. I sit here in the back garden, beer to my right and laptop straight in front of me, feeling the breeze brush my shoulders and have my senses prickled. The sound of two robins chirping away at each other is a sure sign that the summer is coming to its end, and autumn is around the corner. In fact there are birds a plenty at the moment.

I have heard farmers the four seasons of Spring, Summer, Harvest and Winter and this year I am looking forward to Autumn in a way I have never done before. I see it as the start of the birding year, particularly here in East Anglia. The young birds have malted their juvenile feathers and are flitting about building up there strength as they continue to grow. Our summer visitors are leaving us, leaving a hole in the bird population that will not be filled for a few weeks yet. The swallows on Swallow Row have gone now. There is always a dozen or so sitting on the telegraph wire or swooping through insect crowds from April onward but their long journey to Africa has now begun. But it wont be long before our other seasonal migratory friends head here for our milder winters from the north and east. I am looking forward to seeing the flocks of fieldfare over the orchards again.

The Buzzards are doing brilliantly. I can hear one calling directly above me now and without needing to look up I can imagine it circling with little if any flaps of its wings. Instead, splaying its broad wings out and twitching individual feathers to make the best use of the upward thermals. A few weeks back I watched one being hassled by a couple of gulls, leading it to stoop from above and see them off instead. Its so good to have a resident bird of prey family on my patch.

Talking of raptors, I have a smile inside that I am sure I will struggle to shake for the rest of the weekend. This morning I was able to get my barn owl box up on to an old oak tree on the edge of some arable land and orchards. This was the box that had very kindly been given to me for my fiftieth birthday during lockdown. Its location is perfect and local so I will be able to walk by it whenever I want, in fact there will be a few of us monitoring what happens with it. I suspect we will start with pigeons and other squatters but, who knows, one day a family of barn owls might take up residency, and they would be very welcome. In the meantime, I will be pleased to listen to the sounds, slipping through our half-opened bedroom window, of the pair of Tawney Owls that call to each other late at night across the orchard.

There are many other things that have happened over the past few weeks and months but I will write about them as the weeks come and go and we head towards the shorter days and longer nights. They are varied but have a common thread. This house I live in and the village and locality it is situated in makes me increasingly grateful. If there is anything good to have come out of the pandemic, it is that I feel privileged to live where I do and thankful that I am so much more aware of the wonderful things that are right here.