Nest
19 September 2021
A year ago, give or take a week or so, I was cutting back some Hawthorne in the back garden. A little earlier than I perhaps should have done, but the leaves were starting to curl over brown on their edges, and the days were certainly getting cooler. Deeply entwined amongst the criss-cross of branches, I came across a bird’s nest. It’s spring and summer residents had obviously vacated it by then, but evidence of their presence was still there to be seen. The clumsy looking, but skillfully crafted, bowl of twigs and grass could fit comfortably in my hand, and it was easy to make out the moss, finer twigs, feathers and spiders webs that provided the warmth and comfort needed to keep eggs warm and hatched chicks safe.
Scattered haphazardly on top of this were small, pale, downy feathers and bird poop. Signs of rapidly growing youngsters, plucking and preening themselves and frantically exercising their developing wings in readiness to fledge. Then there was the indentation itself, I looked at it and imagined how much care the parents had gone to to prepare a shelter for the young they didn’t yet have. They clearly wanted to give their offspring the very best start in life. A fighting chance of survival in a world beset with threat, risk and danger.
Lisa and I have returned home this evening having dropped Stanley off at University for the first time. Our three and a half hour car journey was spent mostly in silence. We reassured each other with the occasional touch of the hand or rub of the arm, but most of the time we were deep in our own thoughts. I would hear her sniff and I would follow suit, but neither of us had colds. I couldn’t believe quite how sad I was; I had expected to be the more stoic one. But the weekend we spent up there made me emotionally aware of what parenthood truly felt like. When Adora was a toddler she had a minor operation after tripping and falling, and was given general anaesthetic; that was probably the last time I was aware of what it was like to be a Dad. Other than that, it would have been the days of their births.
It felt wrong to be leaving him alone, somewhere that wasn’t his home. The roads came and went, junction after junction, putting more distance and complication between us, and the day gradually faded into evening and then to night. We arrived back in Ardleigh with two large empty cases and an otherwise empty boot. Just the day before it was crammed full with his clothes, bedding and general possessions and teenage paraphernalia. Occasionally, whilst driving, I would look in my mirrors and see the late afternoon sunshine or early evening butterscotch sky where we had been, and he now remained. Through the windscreen ahead of us was a slate grey sky with a short, superimposed shard of a rainbow and lots of rain.
For a bizarre few miles a number of Magpies streaked across a stretch of motorway and the A1. I lost count as to how many I saw and tried to work my way through the whole rhyme, hoping to stumble upon a positive. But today, they were all just one solitary magpie after another; sorrow repeating itself again and again.
As I dragged the hollow cases out of the rain and in to the porch, I was aware how the front door now opened more fully. There were noticeably fewer shoes blocking it. I haven’t been to his room yet but I will, and I will smile at the feathers and the twigs and the bits of moss that he has left behind. Reminders that he hasn’t properly gone yet. And I will smile at the empty space that he will refill at Christmas because, unlike the birds, he will come back to the nest. And we will welcome him back, and wrap our arms around him and hear about his adventures and how far he has spread his wings since he flew away.
And next year, we will do it all over again with Adora.
Bells
12 September 2021
Our village church has rung bells for many hundreds of years and as I walk through the tower doors, we pass a gallery of portraits of the vicars past and not so past. I have often heard bells ringing across towns and villages, including St Mary’s in Ardleigh, and smiled inside just like everyone else tends to whether they are churchgoers or not. There is a magical quality about the sound, but I had never thought that I would be learning to ring bells myself.
Lisa and Adora answered a call for new recruits a few weeks back and, after that first evening, they came back buzzing saying that I would love it if I gave it a go. So, I went with them the following week and I have just had my fourth session (in three weeks) on Friday night. My first pull on the rope, feeling the weight of the bell and the subsequent single note that rang out, sent a shiver through me. I am not religious, but over the past eighteen months or so, I have become aware of the spiritual element residing in so many things around me. Not just the obvious things in nature that fill me with awe, but also the capacity and capability of humankind to create and deliver things of wonder.
The oldest of the eight bells in St Mary’s church is also the largest. Founded in around 1410 and weighing over two-thirds of a tonne, the tenor bell sits proudly alongside its younger and lighter fellows. When Robert Burford cast the bell at his foundry in London, Henry IV was on the throne and, standing there in the belfry, I am struck by who must have stood where I am and rung bells in this tower since it was built five hundred years ago.
The length of daylight hours is shortening by a couple of minutes each day right now, and the skies are starting to get tired. The sun, when it is with us, still delivers plenty of warmth, but when the evening comes the air and the ground cools quickly. The sky, as I look outside, is a milky grey and the birds are doing their final calls and flights to roost noticeably earlier than a month ago. The robins electrify the soundscape wherever we walk, with their precocious verses or flicking ‘chirrups and chirps’, staking claim to their own little patch of land and sky.
And as the fields around us get their annual trim, bearing stubble and dusty-topped soil, a combination of rooks, gulls and pigeons stroll around scavenging what they can from the already harvested grains. The oats were the last grain crops to be gathered. Next the smell of onions will drift in through the car windows whilst driving from a-to-b, or as we walk the dog in and around.
Next weekend, we drive Stanley up north to start his first year at university. And we will do so, coincidentally, at the same time as this year’s fledged birds are finding their voices, establishing their own patches, and finding their own way in the world. But before that, on Tuesday night, I will go and ring the bells.
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.
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.
Day 365
Saturday 20 March 2021
This is the end. The last post of my year-long blog and I feel a little mixed about it; celebratory, satisfied, accomplished, even melancholy. But there is often pleasure in the end of things, and I am focusing on that. The last mouthful from a Sunday roast, the end of the working week, the end of a long car journey or satisfying walk. The final whistle of a football match brings joy or relief, depending on how your team is doing. The last jigsaw piece fitting onto place. Reading the last couple of pages of the book. The last notes of the blackbird before dusk turns to night.
I actually choose some music, anticipating it’s end. The Swan, from the Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens, with its twinkling piano and harp after the cello has done it’s very recognisable thing. More contemporary examples that make my hairs stand on end? If I can Dream by Elvis, Blinded by the Light by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band to name two. Coincidentally, the final minute or so of the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. It’s abrupt and impending calm before the climactic deep breaths are exhaled, and an emotional new day dawns. Love prevails, even after life ends.
For me, this blog has become a means of getting closer to the familiar, understanding more about what is always around me, and celebrating my own local patch. It might be my garden, my village, parish, county. It doesn’t really matter. But to celebrate it I have had to get to know it and appreciate it for all that it is. The mud, the rain and the cold. The sun, the warmth and the joy. I have realised that in the past three-hundred and sixty five days I do know my local places and spaces better, but there is still so much more for me to find out. In doing so, however, I have learned much more about myself. Depth rather than breadth.
I have realised that there is nothing more fascinating and beguiling as the back of one’s hand. Every tiny hair, freckle, bump and lump. Veins darken and ligaments lift and fall as fingers stretch and fold. That scratch that appears out of nowhere, here today gone tomorrow. The tiny burn scar from that time in the garden. I have realised that I really don’t know anywhere fully, and consequently there is always more to understand about everywhere and everything.
“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields – these are as much as a man can fully experience.” Patrick Kavanagh, from collected essays entitled The Parish and the Universe/Parochialism and Provincialism. (Thank you, Erica)
So, this is the end. It began a year ago, five sentences and one picture, logging each day, living with the virus. The idea was to document what everyday life was like for us living with the pandemic. A piece of social history to hand on to my kids and possibly grand-kids? But it grew into something therapeutic for me, and a discipline that I felt obliged to continue with. I have also been grateful for the comments and ‘follows’ of others. Not just family and friends (no names needed) but complete strangers too. Nearly nine-thousand views by three-thousand visitors from thirty-five countries. Thank you ‘Sarah the Cat’, ‘YouDeserveGod.com’, ‘AllAboutBabies’, ‘InnerPeace’ and ‘weewritinglassie’ to name but a few. I don’t know you but am grateful that you and others read my words and passed no judgement. There are lots of good people around, just wanting to connect when it has been very difficult for us to do so. I am not a writer, but I have enjoyed writing it.
To be honest, I anticipated it would all be wrapped up by the Autumn, Christmas at the very latest. Part of my post for New Year’s Day had been sat as a draft for several months In readiness to sign off then. But sadly the infections continued to rise and the death tolls around the world increased. They still are, but thankfully in the UK, with the vaccination programme progressing as planned, we might be seeing the sun rising, just as the seasons pass round full cycle.
What shall I do next? Take a break and read more. Every post has taken time to compile every evening and sometimes during the day. I nearly always need to re-read each post after posting it, and then correct spelling mistakes and dodgy grammar or punctuation. I will use this ‘spare’ time wisely; that’s another thing it has underlined for me – how precious time is. I have ideas for other things. Best to sign off with a quote, fitting for the moment and the time of year. I will obviously keep walking, with eyes wide open. I have trained myself to see things and stop…look again and more closely, for just that little bit longer…take it in and really, really appreciate it.
“and I rose up, and knew that I was tired, and continued my journey”
from Light and Twilight by Edward Thomas.
Day 364
Friday 19 March
“It is not yet spring. Spring is being dreamed and the dream is more wonderful and more blessed than ever was spring. What the hour of waking will bring forth is not known, catch at the dreams as they hover.” Edward Thomas, In Pursuit of Spring
What a beautiful day. The sun has been bleaching the bluest of skies, with only the occasional candyfloss cloud drifting by on the cool north-easterly breeze.
It was a day when I couldn’t find enough reasons to stick my head out of the door. Before teaching my ICT lesson, I took my class out for a walk around the multi-use sports area to get some fresh air and sunshine. I know we are in a different time of the year when the reactive lenses of my glasses adjust to almost completely black before heading back inside.
There was much more laughter in the rooms and corridors than normal too. Most of the kids had wider smiles and genuinely found it hard to be angry or miserable. That said, we are all glad it’s the weekend and we have one more week before the Easter holidays. Very much needed.
Spring hasn’t happened yet. For me, and nearly everyone else, it starts tomorrow, a few think we are already nineteen days in. But really it’s tomorrow, the day of the vernal equinox, when the equator is the nearest part of the earth to the sun creating an equal amount of daylight for both the northern and southern hemispheres. Equinox, equal nights.
But aside from the meteorological or astronomical means for deciding a specific date, I believe the start of spring is a period of time and a state of mind. For me it happens whenever I notice difference or feel slightly light-headed by the awe and wonder of it all. Today, this morning specifically, I felt that. It was just great to be alive, to feel alive.
And that is exactly what I take from Thonas’ quote at the start of this post. Today, and other days over the past few weeks, I have felt and inagined spring, and so it was spring. The smiles, the deep breaths of cool, air, the warmth on my face, the light behind my eyelids. And who knows what joy this spring will continue to bring.
Day 363
Thursday 18 March
Started today with another run before work. It does get the day started with an early sense of accomplishment. As I ran down the lane, a male pheasent bestowed in his emerging colourful regalia ran across my path. Just as, in the opposite direction and directly above the pheasent, a magpie glided across and between the Pollard trees. These trees, lining the full length of the lane, provide wind protection for the apple trees in the orchard.
Then, on my journey to work, along the long and open lanes to Tiptree I watched winter-worn rooks and crows circling their canopies. Blotches of darkness amongst the branches revealed their nests that have seen through yet another bleak season.
A pair of doves sat next to eachother in the boughs of a tree. The lack of foliage provided little privacy from voyeuristic eyes as they rubbed beaks and shuffled, timidly, closer and closer to one another. Love is in the air. And I realise how much one can see whilst driving the daily commute to work.
I have been so caught up with other things lately that I have written nothing of the current pandemic situation. Well, there have been scares about whether the astra-zenica vaccination is safe, some countries have even paused using it. I booked my second A-Z jab for mid-May.
There’s quite a lot of other stuff happening too, but I’m going through a rather prolonged period of news avoidance. Scotland is going through some political angst, and the royal family are facing problems again, and we are preparing ourselves for years of financial belt tightening. And that’s just in the UK.
I have always been interested I current affairs but after the year we have had, I feel done with it all. It’s good, I feel, to take myself offline from it all every now and then. I don’t watch the news or listen to the serious radio stations. But I don’t bury my head, instead I like to think I simply turn my head to look, listen and feel things more pleasing and less acidic. At the moment, of course, the seasons are changing, and that’s far more interesting.
Day 362
Wednesday 17 March
Dad went to see Mum yesterday at the care home. He rang me in the evening and I pictured him with a glass of red wine in his hand as he spoke to me. He explained how Mum’s new room was really nice, how he preferred it to the other one, the carpet the decor and the en suite. The view was nicer too. It’s very touching how Dad talks as/for Mum – he knows what she would say and almost channels her thoughts and observations.
I asked how long he spent with her? Over an hour all told. But he confessed, for the first time to me, that there wasn’t much of a conversation but they “were able to communicate”. I have always been crap at recalling how long they have been together, but I do know it’s a very, very long time. I am sure over the years they have talked about the interesting and the mundane over and over, and then talked about it all again. And I am sure conversation became less in time too? But what Dad would give to have Mum back for an hour, as she was before the dementia, to talk about the interesting and the mundane again. If I could wish for anything right now, it would be that they both have just that one more hour as they used to be.
I love it when someone shares something with me that has inspired or influenced them. I know that it matters to them, and because I count them as a good friend, I consequently have deep respect for them and their opinions. This is certainly the case of my good friend, an Essex man by birth and living in Scotland now. I am fortunate that our paths crossed as many men of our age meet – through our wives and our children. Our kids are the same age, and our wives met when our first-borns were just babies. And I am very happy that we are still good friends, despite the geographical distance between us all. Accidentally connected acquaintances; there’s a cheery lightness of such special friendships.
It was my good friend who introduced me to JA Baker and his beautifully layered, book-come-memoir ‘The Peregrine’. It was perfect timing as it fuelled my emerging interest in the landscape, countryside and history of Essex and East Anglia. As well as a passion for this most beautiful and enigmatic of birds. And just a few days ago he sent me a link to ‘In Pursuit of Spring’ by Edward Thomas. Not only the perfect time of year to be reading this as we approach the Easter break. But also the perfect time for me and ‘where’ I am at right now. Thanks, Mate.
We are a year on from where we were when I started this blog, and we are back at the start of Spring. And even after the first few pages of this book, I am filling with optimism about what is ahead. Leaving the stuff and nonsense of winter behind, and emerging, as spring is and will be over the coming weeks with a realisation of what is important in life. Here’s to friends and sunny times ahead.
Day 361
Tuesday 15 March
I went for a run this morning, 6 am. As well as being particularly proud of myself, I am also really pleased that I have started to take on this exercise routine at this time of year. The morning is obviously brightening, like me it’s ‘getting up’ a little earlier now too. And of course as the sun rises it gently nudges its natural bed fellows, and they wake too.
There was no wind this morning, the fresh painted wall of sky, different from the morning before, was a pale grey. And as I jogged around the fifteen minute route, the grey becam paler but wetter as a light drizzle accumulated on my forehead requiring a sleeve wipe of my tracksuit top. And still, the truly beautiful song of the blackbird, a song I never truly appreciated (as I should have) before writing this blog, accompanies me along the first five minutes.
Then I run along the main Harwich Road with no birdsong, but gulls and crows and pigeons making purposeful fly pasts. During the day, birds tend to swing around in the air seemingly celebrating the simple fact that they can fly. In the morning and evening though, they seem to heading in more direct straight lines, heading from A to B. I’ve only done this run three times this early in the morning but I was able to predict that the car coming from behind me would be a white van with D&P Scaffolding emblazoned on the rear doors. I’ve seen it on all three runs so far.
Then, my last five minutes, and I’m back in the quiet lanes approaching my home. The song thrush that serenaded us most evenings last spring and summer during our evening walks was back on his same perch, dripping notes from the branches to the lane below. Last year I think he sang throughout the seasons as I think he struggled to attract a mate. This year he’s seems to be putting himself out there much earlier. Another beautiful, if repetitive song. The early bird…
At work today I encouraged a few pupils to join me in refilling the bird feeders out back. I love seeing these birds from my office window but I must get more feeding stations set up around our site. And I think I will be able to nurture some interested accomplices in making this happen. Peanuts scattered when over filling the feeder and faces screwed up when tipping out mealworms but I think they enjoyed it. I will work at this.
And as I left today, the sky was clear and the breeze had picked up. I watched some seagulls circling above the school grounds, stretching and twisting and bending and making use of the breezy swirls. And as most birds were flying purposefully from A to B to end their day, I pictured the white D & P Scaffolding van heading in the opposite direction on the main road near my house.
The Bald Birder 