It was like old times today. I’d my alarm set for 04:30 so that I could be out for first light. 10 years after I completed my mid-life PhD – and almost 12 years after my last field work session – I still remember the feeling of coming up to the change of clocks when I was gasping for another hour in bed. This morning, it felt like perversity that I wouldn’t wait another two mornings when dawn would be an hour later, with the clocks’ spring forward. But it wasn’t just some kind of perverse pleasure that had me eager to get out this morning. I’ve been meaning to get out for several days, but the weather’s been shit and I’ve had a cold, so it felt sensible to wait. Then when I checked the forecast last night and saw that there was barely any difference between Friday and Saturday mornings, that cinched it. The early hour would mean there were fewer people about and that would be made even more likely by it being a Friday rather than a Saturday morning. Besides, if I didn’t have any success today, I could get out again at a later hour (by our schedule rather than the birds’) after the weekend.
So I woke this morning to frost and a waning gibbous moon hanging over the end of the street. I had to defrost the car, which gave the cat the chance to dash back inside after his nightly sojourn. Blackbirds were already in full voice, and they were still regaling me when I reached Lagan Meadows. The moon was still there, but a merest wash of light was seeping up into the eastern horizon.
It’s funny, I often think to myself how much my phone has revolutionised my note-taking in the years since the PhD. I didn’t have a phone with internet access – they were only just becoming widespread. I think my phone was a Nokia in those days. Certainly I didn’t constantly take photos on it, the way I do on my iPhone now – as much to act as a jog to my memory as for keeps. I was entirely reliant on my equipment and my notebook. Now I just hold up my phone to take a voice memo of my songsters instead. But I still take notes. Plenty of them. The whole lot go together like some kind of synaesthesia. It just helps me go back there when I come to write about it “properly”.
I was grateful for the frost, in that it made the muddy paths easier to walk on. Despite the cold, there was a good turnout for the dawn chorus. Those two things gave me a sense of relief. Sometimes with all the anxiety about climate change I worry that I’ll never experience a decent frost again (and yes, I am aware of the consequences of the collapse the Mid Atlantic Meridonial, but hey, my anxiety isn’t always rational). I have loved the feeling of a frozen mucky path’s hard ridges since childhood – I think it must have been the relief of not having to keep dragging my wellied feet out of the sucking mud all the time as I rambled across the fields. This morning’s frost wasn’t all that deep – according to my phone the temperature was 1oC when I started out – just a little crisping. But it was welcome. As were the voices. Blackbird. Robin, Song thrush. Dunnock. Even a pre-sunrise blackcap, my first this year. I didn’t hear a chiffchaff till well after sunrise. No willow warblers yet. And of course there were great tits, exhorting me onwards. And a blue tit was singing a version of its song that was new to me. I was too entranced listening to it to try and capture it on the phone. That’s the nice thing about not trying to record birdsong. Sometimes it’s good to just listen. To not try and hoard it.
When I got to the river, the level was almost at the lip of the banks, and the water was flowing really fast. I couldn’t get across the channel onto Morelands Meadow with the floods. At one point a male mallard swept past, spinning like a piece of foam on the brown surge . Twenty miles an hour?? The bird’s eyes looked to be dancing in his head with excitement. Nothing like a bit of white water rafting first thing in the morning, I guess.
I turned back the way I had come and crossed the open field back behind Mickey Taylor’s lock to get back into the woods and head for home. I still hadn’t heard my target species (which I’ll be writing about in the Guardian – the piece should be out in a couple of weeks). I’d encountered them about 10 days ago, in a particular patch, but this species is not the earliest riser so I was still to come across them this morning. However, by now the sun had risen. They had to announce themselves soon.
And then, in the undergrowth, one did. A single note. Other species were still singing. I wasn’t 100% sure. I waited. That single note is often a substitute for song in this species. And then, that familiar song. There was a little exchange with a rival male, and then one of them flew directly into a bowl of sunlight. I didn’t even have to lift my binoculars.
The first plane roared overhead. 06:51. I hung about and witnessed a magical encounter. If I can get all I want to write into my next Country Diary, it’ll be a miracle. But the whole morning felt a little bit miraculous after all the rain. I might just hoard it all.
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