Wings

Those gossiping birds, not for now, those operatic arias of the spring dawn-chorus, when, like little pumped up Pavarotti’s on the end of a high limb, beaks held high, busting out their own particular breed’s Nessun Dorma. Now the songs a more conversational chittering away, obvious evidence it seems of covert wheeling and dealing in the scrubby undergrowth. Sounding sometimes like satisfied agreeable muttering, and at others, annoyed little protests of just “whose patch this was”, and “who actually found this food first”, then the answering of contrite muttered apologies and “begging your pardons”.

These feathered citizens now picked their way through the gentle heat haze of the day too. After months of frantically topping up those increasingly demanding, cavernous, little gaping beaks, with the morsels from endless dawn to dusk forays; frantically seeking out very risky foraging. All the while keeping a nervous lookout for danger; not dropping clues and hints for the raiders around the hedgerows looking for eggs and chicks; and those Sparrow hawks and Falcons stalking the distracted parents making any habitual disappearances, or breaking cover from some secluded hideaway nest site. 

The song birds risking all, while relying on the neighbourhood alarm call system to keep everyone safe.

Those raiders and hunters in turn, frantically feeding and silencing the demanding gaping beaks in their own nests.. All in a time when there is so much hope awakened with the warmer sun and greening of the world. Seen on the human stage the performance narrates an optimism of new blossoming life and nurture; a musical extravaganza, a happy upbeat, cute and fluffy tale, and a feast for all the senses. 

And yet the play enacted in this theatre of the woodlands, the scrub, and along the river bank, is more ancient and classic Greek in its plot; set in a cruel world, so much potential for tragedy, grief and terrible loss, where happy endings are for the rare and fortunate, victorious few, that make it through to the days of summer.

The worst acts of this ancient epic drama are over for this year, the survivors around me this afternoon could now fill their own crops at a much more leisurely pace, relaxed, safer in the dense undergrowth with no real need to break cover, and those second broods of demanding beaks nearby, always seem a more relaxed affair to nurture through with the growing abundance of food, the added heat, and the longer days.

Above the chattering in the scrub, no creatures were perturbed as the sky was being seemingly embroidered by the black silhouetted scythes of Swifts’ wings. The birds, normally seen and heard screaming at dusk as they weave in and out of the roof tops at a fabulous pace, and then wheel high over-head in an evening gradually raising up into the sky to finally sleep on the wing, before gently gliding back earthwards towards the dawn.  

This day though, they were here for a change,  taking place of the usual Swallows, as they silently twisted and swooped low over hedges and close to the tree tops of the Sycamore and Blackthorn scrub by the Packhorse bridge, and then dipped and steeply banked around and whirled back over again, for another gaped beak, feeding pass, as the sultry summer heat seemed to press their unseen insect larder low in the haze under the weight of the air.

The adult birds may have already left to cross France and Portugal before heading across the Sahara to southern Africa, and these reaping in the thick air were the remaining fledglings, spending a frantic month or so, exploring the ability of their wings while fattening up ready to somehow follow that same route as mum and dad, half way around the globe.

 Higher still the unflinching Kites and Buzzards, themselves, far from still as they stretched out stationary wings, and with the slightest ruffle of a feather or dip of the tail, they swept and wheeled, effortlessly circling across the sky. These worried not, nor unsettled from this distance, those creatures below.  

Surfing on those enigmatic thermal crests rising from the trees and hedges, and roads and buildings, and the small rare mounds and hillocks in the flat landscape below. Waves of air, rising and dipping, unseen at first but becoming visible when watching these raptors effortlessly discover and ride upon them. Gliding gracefully across and down from one warm up-draft to rise circling on another breaker, navigating the skies on the lookout for plunder below.

 In the nearby woods the cooing of the Doves and depressed lament of the fat Woodpigeons; “I’m so bored, I’m so boored , I’m soo booorred!”  had also now lost its desperation and urgency as food had been found in abundance, quite probably plundered from the plague of Pheasant feeding stations in this landscape and the efforts of the local allotment society; fat babies called Squabs fed to bursting and had somehow survived the terrible nest building of their parents, and a murderous spring survived.

Their sounds seemed deeper now, the softer murmurs of the fat and the satisfied. Those who could now raise a further brood or even two, with more leisure on a cornucopia of available food. Life’s only real remaining effort seemingly put into constant wooing and occasionally cooing, and the frequent very public consummation of their mostly monogamous bond. Constantly flirting, cementing that lifelong bond with their chosen mate, as if it ever needed any confirmation, after all they had survived together and lived through, and the time they spent checking each other out, which really could and should, if you ask my opinion, have been invested in better nest building and housekeeping.

Occasionally on these days as a fishermen surrounded with the sounds of the waters and of the life around it, you find you are tuned into the rhythms of nature just that little bit more finely than usual, or just fortunate enough to have no unnecessary distractions like insect hatches, rising fish ahead, or tangled lines, and are instead more receptive to notice the change in mood when it occurs.  

It’s not an alarm call or a creeping cold chilled shadow, crossing over the landscape that alerts you to its presence. Just that you become aware that something’s now amiss in the world and it then dawns on you that everything else warm blooded, except you, has stopped and fallen silent.

All is quiet and still except the insects and that never ending, yet ever changing song of the trickling Brook that’s constant, its sound now though, clearer and a little more distinct.

And if you’re sensitive to the change you realise half the orchestra of the day have ceased playing. Do you detect a slight sense of expectancy and a growing tension in the air?

No storm evidentially approaches us anytime soon, the air feels no heavier, the breeze still gently brushes the leaf’s and grasses, as ever it did today. Theres no change in the weather apparent to you, that has occasioned this silent, disquiet in the ‘natural world’.

This world has turned weird and inexplicable on you .

Some deep instinctive urge lifts your head as if searching for clues in the heavens of what’s amiss.  The skies have emptied of both flight and song. Even the Buzzards and the Kites seem to have gone to ground. The scythe wings of the juvenile Swifts have vanished completely. The bustle and natter in the hedgerows had ceased except the odd short nervous chatter as the residents seem to settle in together to wait this growing menace out.

The “I’m so boored” coos of the fat wood pigeons fall mercifully quiet, and now you noticed that there isn’t even the sound of the skylark, a sound so constant and common by the Brook that it’s conspicuous only in its absence

Not even the warning alarm calls of birds had occasioned this growing dread, no sudden panic or flight, just an ominous stillness and silence as the world hunkers down, holds its breath and waits.

Then as I am searching the sky,  inexplicably drawn to a tiny  area where grey clouds were fringed higher up with white billowing cotton wool. High up in that clear patch of pale bluesky on the border of that clean white, one small black speck was wheeling in methodical little circles gradually across the sky.

As I focused on the tiny shape in the clear distant patch high above I can make out yet another pair of sickle wings,  small and broad in this particular mode of flight. But the bird unlike a Swift, has a fanned out semi-circle of a tail while its circling. This one wheeling on the high thermals gaining yet more height, considering options and selecting a target for a murderous dive towards the earth. Watching maybe for something fool hardy enough to break cover and vainly try to reach the safety of the woods.

How can such a tiny speck cast such a large dark shadow mesmerising an entire valley of creatures below?

A Peregrine, seems a small and seemingly inconsequential bird from down by the fields, unless you notice its effect on the entire warm blooded world around you. Something little over a foot to a foot and a half in length depending in its gender. You have to really strain to notice it high up in the sky , so high where it can block not even the slenderest ray of sunshine. Who noticed it first amongst us and how did the message spread?

Nor can it cast any shadow at all upon the fearful below, it lets out no call of warning, yet it seems now to captivate an entire valley. It’s not the first one I have seen, nor my closest encounter, or the most eventful, and each sticks with me clearly. But I’ve never felt the extent of this profound dread before in the human world or the natural one, even though now I was just an observer and more likely my presence a saviour for some and not a target.

While this miniscule silhouette circles above, its shadow of silence, stillness and dread, tracks across the world below, until eventually it passes on, this time to circle over distant pastures and out of the range of my vision, over a gentle green slope, then behind a distant wood, exporting its reign of terror over the horizon.  Then at last this land around the Brook returns with a few nervous exchanges and shuffling. The crows start cawing. Splitting the air and taking to the wing and the world around returns to the chattering the cooing the wooing. while rising high above the crop lifts the sweet silver song of the larks. That buzzing, lazy, hazy English summer afternoon by a little river returns, all safe from harm with a thousand creatures again going about their day, seemingly oblivious to what just passed through.

Surviving again this time, growing and preparing the next generation, while fattening up for cruel times.

How come an incident so seemingly insignificant, a tiny speck of a circling bird seen for a minute or two, high in the sky on a day like so many others, etches such a clear and lasting memory?

It fascinates me why some seemingly mundane events stick?

There have been devastating disagreements in my life, lessons that should have really stuck. Bad accidents, losses. Pains I have received, and pains I have shamefully and carelessly inflicted. Moments of monumental madness that have completely derailed relationships with some incredibly wonderful partners, broken up good friendships or sunk carefully laid plans.

Valuable life lessons. These are now largely buried or faded from memory and the details all but forgotten, with only scar damage still evident, to surface, uncalled for, in times of similar stress.

But a fleeting glimpse as a small child of an Eagle momentarily wheeling above a cliff high above a waterfall, or the sight of a flock of Gannets diving at a shoal of herring, the discovery of an Adder curled up in a spiral sleeping in the bracken by a dry stoned wall, a dark silhouette of a hammer head shark sweeping close by my rocky perch, and now a valley shushed into silence by a distant tiny silhouette. None of which were remotely life-changing experiences, yet all stick with me in detailed clarity and it seems, and likely, will remain for the rest of my days. What’s the logic here ?

The vast majority of these events created by some contact with the natural world over time, not from human interactions, even meetings with personal heros, these are remembered in the words recounted to others after the event, they are distant fading memories. They do not hold the permanence and clarity of a natural encounter for me. Is it something within, more instinctive and primordial, or is that merely fancy and romanticism?

It seems we develop or we maintain, an awareness of nature’s warning system to the presence of predators or the signals of danger. Like our ability to see patterns out of congress with natural world, stemming from the often recounted ancient need to recognise the presence of the Snake or Tiger in the long grass. Hearing or feeling something amiss in the general bustle or buzz, warning of imminent  danger, is maybe a primary survival function and I guess with it, comes an ability to store these signs and experiences clearly for recall, a function no doubt that kept our ancestors safe when the British countryside was considerably less cuddly.

Fred en-route to a hot date in a shady cave with Raquel. The young lad all hot and bothered and not recognising strange orange stripes in the straw coloured grasses, might tragically leave our poor maiden all made up and yet to be kissed when the stars come out that night. A sort of Darwinian way of assisting Raquel’s poor Tinder choices from polluting the gene pool. Poor Fred fed the tiger cubs before he had the chance he had dreamt of and longed for, but still in his own way contributed to the future of human kind.

But it seems there’s more to it than imminent danger, close contact with Otters, hearing and seeing a Night Jar on the dead branch of a tree, certain close encounters with Kingfishers; Deer; Badgers; Water Voles; and Grass snakes; all experienced down at the Brook, held no threat at all, and yet all remain clearly etched on my mind’s eye as significant. The feeling and the sounds still accessible to be recalled at will.

I have no idea of the answers, but maybe it’s why I’m drawn to the open air and the natural world, its something deep and instinctive and due somewhat, to what never happened in that cave with the lusty Raquel on that fateful night, and Fred’s  modest little morsel, still unused, becoming a mere Tiger cub snack.

Have a great weekend. May your lines be tight and your waders dry and may the road rise for you longer than Fred’s little morsel.

Chris Avery

POD

Left: First choice….The shameful squalid conditions for the poor squabs of the neglectful Wood pigeons.

Right: Our Raquel  nervously making the final preparations before the arrival at her cave  of her latest Tinder choice, the hapless  Fred.