Clear skies

It was the kite that made me do it. I opened the curtains to sunshine, clear skies, and a red kite sailing right past the window as if there was nothing extraordinary about this. It did a couple of circuits of the road, flashing in the light as it turned, then pushed off elsewhere. I ought to do that, I thought. Push off outside for a bit.

Today, a year ago, was the day I learnt that yesterday, a year ago, had been the last day my dad knew about. He fell, and hit his head, and died six days later. I miss him. He would have liked hearing about today’s walk. The colours of the leaves. The clarity of the light. The kites, which I caught up with a couple of miles away. There was an explosion of woodpigeons from the hedge at the other side of the field and then the kites’ quavering cries, and crows in the air shouting, and everything on the move, except me – I was just watching the kites hang in the air over the hedge, talk to each other, soar suddenly, turn about, and return to alight a field away from me, with a gentle folding of wings.

Kite (at a distance)

They seemed fully in charge of the place. A small buzzard entered stage left and covered a few yards close to the ground before perching on a tree stump some way distant. It stood very still while the kites resumed their movements; this time they decided to go elsewhere, and they flew out of sight.

This field will have a substation built on it next year. This year it’s been fallow, and it’s full of life.

I turned the corner and suddenly another buzzard was shouting at a – a what? A rook? A raven? Deep croaks. Piercing cries. They seemed similarly sized. The aerial battle crossed the entire field, and then the next. (I put the video on Twitter at @venetiajm if you want to see and hear them.) PS: Twitter kindly confirmed it was indeed a raven, which was great to know, although I did stupidly describe its sparring partner as a red kite rather than a buzzard.

Midday shadows in November are already quite long.

But what Dad would have liked best about today’s walk would have been the spitfire. Dad loved planes. He loved to see them, hear them, go up in them. He was born in 1929 and liked to say he was living in the house at the end of the runway at Croydon aerodrome when WWII started. Certainly he and his brother were among the first evacuees. He took me to airshows when I was small and we watched planes, cotton wool in our ears, and for the past year my eyes have prickled more or less every time I’ve seen the “local” spitfire or one of the aerobatic planes in the area go over. I will always want to tell him I saw them. The spitfire today climbed and twisted and the sun caught its underside and then I lost focus and it moved into the distance.

Kestrel, busy being.

Nemophilist*

Contains trees, birds, and a measure of leavetaking.

About an hour’s walk from here, a footpath follows the inside edge of a small wood at the edge of some common land. I love it there. I heard my first cuckoo there. There are old oaks, and tall silver birches, and always lots of birds.

To get to the wood, first cross the common, following the little path worn by bicycles and feet. The cows were grazing today, with attendant crows and jackdaws.

For dull-but-necessary work reasons today was the last time I’d be able to get to the wood for a while. It turned out to be a beautiful day for a walk. I was here in late January, when it was too cold to hold the camera for more than a couple of minutes, the light was dim, and the common was full of fieldfares. Two months later, the sun was high, the air was mild, and everything was greening, singing, nesting, busy.

I reached my favourite tree by the path and sat a few feet away among the rustle of last year’s leaves. The wood was full of birdsong. On this clip (with a link to @LevParikian, who’s been doing an extremely useful and entertaining daily series on identifying bird songs in recent weeks) near the start you can hear a raven – maybe the same one I heard in January – and a crow, and near the end a green woodpecker. A robin nearby sang every few seconds. There’s a chiffchaff in there somewhere; there were great tits and blue tits too. Not on this recording but definitely present among the trees were some long-tailed tits (quiet and high-pitched) and a wren (fortissimo opera).

Jackdaws flew overhead in chattering groups every now and again. At one point I heard the unforgettable mewing cry of a buzzard and turned to look out past the trees towards the fallow field nearby – and glimpsed three in a group, heading to more distant hunting grounds. As they left, a kestrel landed on the wires, and I watched it hunt successfully, diving into the grasses after a brief hover and then flying off quickly with whatever it had caught.

Touching the bark of the old oak before I leave has become a reflex action. Today I said byebye for a while. I’ll be back whenever I can visit.

Back along the fields full of skylarks. They’re soaring and singing and in full spring swing now.

And above them, briefly, before it wheeled away to the distant river and the rabbit-filled common that runs alongside it: a red kite.

*A nemophilist is a lover of forests, a haunter of woods – so said Susie Dent on Twitter this morning.

Cronk

I saw a raven today. It flew over several times as I was watching fieldfares a couple of miles from home, and cronked – a deep, slightly hoarse call, a noise I’ve not heard since seeing ravens on Mull last summer. Just for a moment I was back by the loch and the sunshine.

The fieldfares were picking their way across the common field on this cold, hazy Monday – about two degrees, duvet sky, not much wind to speak of, thin light even at midday – and fluttering up in shoals every now and again with a rattly chatter.

It took a while to cross the common, what with all the stopping and looking. A sparrowhawk was being hassled by a jackdaw. A little egret flew by along the line of the stream at the far end. The fieldfares were coming and going all the time. They have such beautiful muted colours, such January colours.

Then on into the small wood, where a great cloud of long-tailed tits were busy combing through the trees, maybe 20 or 30 of them, a systematic squad of high squeaks and intense activity. Great tits and blue tits were further away among the trees. A robin was singing.

A welcome flash of colour from the gorse bush by the path.

More yellow clinging to the trees. Every bit of colour is good in January.

And once into the bigger woods, the sun broke briefly through, and there was gold:

So many small birds on the walk along the farm track. This might not look like much in winter – a bit scrappy, a bit dull – but it was packed. A mile of birds. Linnets gathered in the bigger trees that punctuate the hedgerow. Goldfinches glittered overhead. Blackbirds chased each other as they sought out the fat ivy berries. Robins sang me to the edge of their territories.

And all the while starlings clicking and whistling and wheeling overhead. Then a pair of woodpigeons, sitting like little buzzards at the top of a tree. And then suddenly the real thing – a buzzard flew over the hedge and landed in the field, and started to search for worms. The cherry on the (slightly frozen) cake.

 

Old friends

I wanted to see some favourite old trees that I’d not visited all summer. I’d remembered them and their beautiful shade during the heatwave, but I’d forgotten about the magic wrought by late-afternoon, early-winter light.

But I’ve run ahead of myself (despite Knees). The walk began a couple of hours earlier along fields and among skylarks, who were making brief skirmishes out of their hiding places in the bleached stubble and leftover wildflower strips, and occasionally venturing short song phrases as they chased and swooped. A cloud of goldfinches sparkled past. Crows and rooks picked through the new lines in fields already greening the next crop. Further along the path, the paddock was full of wagtails, plus a few more goldfinches digging into the moss, and a magpie patrolling the edge.

The hedge rustled in the breeze. Still quite dense and holding on to most of its leaves. Ivy and hawthorn drooping under the weight of their berries. Everything looking bright under the blue skies.

I looked up and RED KITE RED KITE – one much larger than the other, both turning close circles over the trees, and then suddenly something further off took their attention and they moved on out of sight.

Across the common field, with views of trees that are now putting on their best rig:

and into the oak wood. Hallo, long time no see. Rustling through leaves underfoot, listening to the quiet sea-swish above.

On reaching the southern boundary of the reserve, another old friend:

and on into the company of more ancient trees, all glowing in the light and hosting birds – a goldcrest in some pines, a group of long-tailed tits si-si-si-si-ing their way through a chain of branches, and a pair of buzzards checking out open ground near the last favourite on my tour, which is already bare:

and then on the long, slow, and creaky way back, the light, oh the light.

Look, new buds already. On we go.

Turn

I went to see a buzzard today, and to feel how the year has turned and how far I’ve come.

Buzzards often hang around near this small wood – a fairly dense collection of various types of tree, probably planted as a windbreak or screen for the farm behind, because the ground is flat and open just there: exposed enough for a small windfarm to have been sited on the other side. The turbines change direction depending on the wind: today they were mostly facing north-northwest, turning their usual circles, on a brilliantly sunny, briskly breezy morning. There were several dragonflies enjoying the warmth on the path.

Autumn’s colours have begun to take hold – the sunshine made flames of the cherry trees planted on the outside edge, and picked out the turning maples. There were rustles underfoot.

A jay screetched from somewhere in the interior and made me jump. The only other sound was from the turbines nearby, which sound a little like the air-noise you sometimes become aware of just before you hear the engines of a fighter jet racing across the sky – a hiss, the sound of air being compressed and chopped and propelled, I suppose. Some days they also make a slight underlying whine, a bit like a washing-machine quietly churning away before the spin cycle. But today there was just the low hiss, the rhythmic shadow on the field falling and lifting, falling and lifting, turn, turn, turn

and boom! there was the buzzard. It came sailing over the top of the trees and circled overhead, checking out my movements before it wheeled away in search of prey more to its liking. A beautiful, pale-coloured bird, not the largest I’ve seen here, and also not the loudest: just one small plaintive cry – one of my favourite sounds, something that lifts you right out of yourself instantly – before it headed elsewhere. I said hallo to it, and felt the sun’s warmth, and remembered previous walks here, and admired the colours.

 

Black gold

Autumn is pushing at an open door. Here is September, which I am conditioned to think of as the main source of Newness (thanks, school). It also means this:

Half an hour was all it took. The blackberries slipped off their stalks with the slightest persuasion, and started little avalanches among their neighbours (boxes held beneath each heavy stem to catch the bonus bounty as it tumbled). Pick all your voluptuous words and string them together and you still wouldn’t come close to the swollen abundance.

There is a whole long riverbank of this. The water slipped by, quiet and clear. Not many birds watching me collecting the fruit, apart from a robin tick-tick-ticking at me a couple of bushes further along the footpath, and some goldfinches tinkling overhead. A few mallards and moorhens on the water. Woodpigeons clattering through the ash trees.

The ivy has just started to open in a few places. It’s already attracting bees. Soon there will be thousands and thousands of these tiny flowers.

And so we tip into another season: that wearyingly hot, dry summer now feels as though it belonged to another year entirely. Everything is changing, turning. Jumpers on. Let’s go.

 

Small things

After the deep freeze in early March, now the long drought. It has been hot and dry for weeks and weeks, and trees are stressed and dropping leaves, and flowers are over before they’ve begun, and grass has dessicated to dusty strands and simply stopped: suspended, it is waiting for the skies to open and the air to cool, and it is not alone.

Along the river path, lined with drooping nettles and shrunken brambles, the greens are browning. The river was low and sluggish today; the fields simmered quietly, crops trembling in a heat-haze rather than a breeze. But the path was alive with butterflies – I saw a comma, a gatekeeper, a peacock and a lot of whites, large and small. Apparently the way to tell these apart is to look at the corners. This is a small white, judging by that advice. It looks as though it’s had a stressful summer.

Banded demoselles skimmed the surface of the water. The river was full of the tall reedy greenery that springs up at this time of year, while the plants on the banks were looking healthy enough – clumps of Himalayan balsam, busy with bees; splashes of tansy and the last of the thistles, and a plant I asked Twitter about and was kindly told was small teasel, dipsacus pilosus – tall, thistly flowerheads, with white flowers that were attracting insects.

 

 

 

The big horse chestnut that marks the halfway point between one mill and another is already rusting and the conkers seem very advanced for the third week of July, surely.

A mallard moved her young closer into the reeds as I passed, watching me until she judged I’d moved far enough away. The only other birds I saw were wrens, goldfinches, sparrows and great tits. All the small birds are still ekeing out their riverside lives in this great heat.

On the way back I found a kestrel feather on the path. I’ve seen kestrels from here many times, hunting in the scrubby field next to the water. Now I can’t stop picking up this feather and thinking about the bird it came from.

 

Here today

People need homes. But it was hard not to feel grim about the sight (and sound) of housebuilders’ diggers eating up more of the farmland I think of as the skylark fields.

The people who will live in these new houses will have magnificent birdsong to accompany their lives, if they open the windows and listen. Skylarks live in the surrounding fields, dozens of them, protecting nests with their astonishing flight songs, hurtling skyward out of here:

And out of here.

These are the views to the left of the path. To the right, metal fencing around the building site comes up to the path for a short distance, and behind that piles of excavated earth, a new road (or maybe it will be a pavement), a temporary car park, cars, hard hats, a generator whirring, heavy machinery rumbling and clanking, distant shouting.

A corn bunting was sitting on the fence and scratching away at a phrase every few seconds. I know this now, but I didn’t then. I only knew it sounded like a new bird to me. I took a couple of poor photos, and recorded a short clip on the phone, and once home asked Al what it was. He knows about these matters that matter, and told me what it was. I looked this bird up.

A corn bunting “is most usually seen perched on a wire or post,” the RSPB said. It seems a metal fence around a building site will do just as well. It flew across the path after a minute or so and repeated its call from the field edge, where the cow parsley is now going over but other flowers are taking its place – white campion, mallow, poppies, hedge mustard, and others I can’t name. The skylarks rose and fell and sang all the while in the background, deeper into the field. Here’s a good recording of a corn bunting from Xeno-Canto, better than mine.

The corn bunting is on the Red list after a “dramatic population decline”, the RSPB says. The UK population fell by a horrific 89% between 1970 and 2003. “This is mainly because fewer seed and insect food sources are available to them on farmland,” the society adds. Corn buntings are also a late-nesting species, and so vulnerable to nest destruction during harvesting.

Breeding success relates directly to the availability of insect food. Corn buntings take insects from crops, set-aside, grassland and field margins. The RSPB has advice for farmers on land management for corn buntings and says on its website that there are 11,000 breeding territories in the UK.

A mile or so further on, the paved path runs out at the farmhouse and turns into a foot-worn track across the common land where horses and cows graze and jackdaws, crows and starlings gather in large groups.

A buzzard was circling in the far distance over the forested hillside; a woodpecker was drumming up there too, somewhere. Half a dozen swallows made regular forays out from the barns behind me and over the common before swooping back to their nests. I’m glad they’re back again. I do wonder whether the corn bunting will hang about though.

A little bit of bread

The crop is several inches high now. There are skylarks among it – and above it.

A male kestrel was hunting along the railway embankment at the far end of the field, searching up and down the trackside, and taking short pauses on the telegraph wires.

Nearer me, a yellowhammer was loudly repeating his very particular call; I caught sight of him at the top of some hawthorn before he dropped back into the long hedge that divides two fields. One field is under cultivation and the other is thistly scrub. The hedge is full of birds, but his song stood out from the chorus today.

The wild plants along the path are coming into flower now. There will soon be a lot of poppies and thistles – great clumps of greenery have sprouted up everywhere. One thistle was early:

The hawthorn is past its very best now in places, but the elderflowers are opening. And still the glorious cow-parsley froth goes on. It’s particularly lovely under the trees in the coppice, where the light and shade do magical things.

 

More bird calls came from inside the coppice; blackbirds, a robin, something I couldn’t identify. I stood on the edge and looked in. The air was cool and green in there. But I sat on the path with my back to the wood, just shaded by it, and watched the fields for skylarks instead. Over and over again they rose from their few inches of cover and sang, and fluttered way above me and sang, and sang some more, and then abruptly flipped the switch to Off and dropped out of sight. A fast train shrieked past, just a field away; the road rumbled in the further distance; a small plane crossed; another train sped by; but suddenly it was just me and the skylarks for a minute. And light on the leaves above.

 

Fresh breath

The river was low and lazy this hot May morning. The air was clouded in places with insects, drifts of seeds, and handfuls of hawthorn confetti. The riverbank has exploded into all the greens and whites imaginable.

Apart from the purple comfrey flowers, this is the entire palette just now, bar the odd dandelion along the footpath here and there. The hawthorn and the cow parsley are locked in an Ultimate Froth competition, with garlic mustard and nettles providing backup. The big horse chestnut tree is in full candle. The willows are drooping their new leaves down to the water and the ashes are finally extending green fronds outwards. Everything looks cool and fresh, astringent, new.

A tern patrolled the water, fishing: graceful wingbeats, a sudden turn on a sixpence as it spotted something, plunged, ascended, again and again. Dunnocks were busy all along the hedge, wrens called at intervals, and a singing robin accompanied me to the edge of his patch before returning to his preferred lookout. No sign of a kingfisher or the kestrel today. No sign of the magpies either, but their enormous nest was still visible among the new greenery, top left on the other bank.

After all that green, the glorious expanse of red campion in the field next to the river was enough to pull anyone up sharply. I wonder who else has seen it, perhaps from the higher viewpoint of the A-road that roars nearby. It’ll be here a little while yet.