I had the good fortune to be invited to give a workshop on poetry and birds at Jubilee Farm. It was a wonderful day in an inspiring place. It was great to have the opportunity to highlight the good work that is being done there.
A view over Jubilee Farm
Thanks to Geoff Newall, now of the Belfast Hills Partnership, for the original invitation to give the workshop; and to Matt Williams and Portia Woods of Jubilee for getting the logistics sorted, and for their hospitality. Also to Martin and Nuala and other attendees for their warm participation in the workshop and everybody’s contribution to the delights of the day.
Anglo-Nubian goats at Jubilee Farm
And as always thanks to Paul Fleckney, editor of the The Guardian’s Country Diary.
As an addendum to yesterday’s post, I want to give a shout-out for this event this coming Friday. Unfortunately, other commitments mean I won’t get to attend myself, more’s the pity. However, having been in his company on Saturday at Jubilee Farm, I can attest to Geoff’s expertise and delightful ability to tell a story. I have been scouring details on the Bombus clan ever since.
I’d a lovely day on Saturday, delivering a workshop on poetry and birds at Jubilee Community Farm, which is Northern Ireland’s first community-owned farm. We looked at a range of poems about birds, and then spent a couple of happy hours rambling the fields, looking at and listening to the variety of species that are making their home in and around the farm. More of that anon. Many thanks to Matt Williams and Portia, and to all the participants. Special thanks also to Geoff Newall, formerly of Jubilee Farm, now (or again!) of the Belfast Hills Partnership, who originally engaged me to give the workshop, and who also did me the honour of returning to attend it!
The same workshop is taking flight later on this month, and migrating to Portadown! While there, it will mutate a little. I will be giving this version of my Learning the Songs of Birds workshop over 2 two-hour sessions on Saturday 11th & 18th May at the fabulous Millennium Court.
For further details on these birdsong workshops, check out my Birds page.
So now for that magical encounter that I first wrote about a couple of weeks ago, here. Today’s Country Diary is the big reveal.
Chaffinches have always been one of my favourite species. Indeed, I previously wrote here, they were among the first species I learned to identify under my own steam from a bird guide as a child. And it seems I’m not alone. Coincidentally, Stephen Moss also wrote about the male chaffinch in The Guardian this week, and and confirmed that this was his experience also. No wonder the chaffinch has such a grip on our hearts.
It’s a grief, as the commentator FinrodFelagund said below the line of both pieces, that the chaffinch has declined to such a degree that they are absent from gardens in some areas. I can’t imagine a world without chaffinches. Those same finches’ wings of Hopkins’ Pied Beauty, might also be those of the Holy Ghost with which the poet ends his wonderful poem, God’s Grandeur. There lives the dearest freshness in chaffinch wings; and in their voices.
I’d like to thank to Paul Fleckney for his editorial guidance, which, as always, improved my writing.
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.
Pre-dawn looking towards Mickey Taylor’s Lock
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.
The waning gibbous moon still visible at Lagan Meadows
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.
The way to Moreland’s Meadow: inaccessible
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.
Sunrise
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 bowl of sunlight
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.
Now then. I wasn’t expecting my latest Country Diary to be out till Monday, so when Beloved shouted from the living room “You’re in it today!”, it was a very pleasant surprise. We get the hard copy every Saturday, so it was lovely to see my recent take on the waders/shorebirds of Tyrella in Saturday’s sepia column next on the letters page.
Then I checked my Guardian app and that’s when I realised that the paper version and the online version are a little differently finessed themselves. The paper one has my original opening. The online version is a little compressed. But hey, great to have both.
Hence, the uploads of the photos of the paper version. Just because.
Clearly this must be a plot to ensure that I buy the hard copy every time I have a piece published.
Thanks as always to Paul Fleckney, the Country Diary’s editor. It’s great to get a Saturday slot, no matter what the Bauplan.
I was invited to MC this gorgeous event on Friday evening at the Crescent Arts Centre, by its instigator and mediator, Natasha Cuddington. It was a lovely event, and a pure pleasure to introduce it.
Art emerges out of the background of a life, in a way that is similar to how a signal emerges from noise. All of us are shaped by chance encounters that mediate and channel our voices into different expressions of sound and meaning. The full title of the event Correspondences: Collaboration, Noise & Innovative Poetries gives a flavour of the mix and its integration. The performances evolved from the background noise of the artists’ lives through the chiming of correspondences that transformed the original soundings into signal works of art that shimmered with new valence.
Matt Kirkham read from his latest collection Thirty-Seven Theorems of Incompleteness (Templar, 2019), as well as new work. He was followed a collaborative poetry performance by Zara Meadows and Alanna Offield. Their work referenced pop cultural moments, particularly those associated with social media, in a perceptive and irreverent fashion. That was followed by the performance of a recent collaboration by Eilish Martin and Natasha Cuddington, entitled “Didn’t get round to Nick Cave’s Carnage”. As well as being inspired by Nick Cave’s album, this collaboration was also suggested to Natasha by book “Hearing”, a listening-in between Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino, that explores “ongoing existence in a phenomenal world”. Finally, we had the pleasure of “Correspondences”, which is a soundscape and piano composition by Shannon Kuta Kelly, that performs Eilish’s and Natasha’s collaboration both vocally and musically.
The work and its performance had evolved beautifully out of the background noise of the artists’ lives through the chiming of correspondences between them. As audience, we had the pleasure of absorbing how the original soundings had been transformed into signal works of art that shimmered with new valence.
Many thanks to Natasha, Eilish, Shannon, Alanna, Zara & Matt. Also to the Crescent, and particularly the technical staff who ensured everything ran smoothly; and of course to the audience whose attention and appreciation helped bring the performance of the work into its full expression.
Shannon Kuta Kelly rehearsing “Correspondences”, which is a soundscape and piano composition (with accompanying visual).
I have a number of people to thank. First and foremost is John Maguire of Clonee, who went above and beyond in terms of helping me get access to sites, and pointing me in the right direction for the larger context. Particular thanks also to Owen Rush for the chance to visit Drumkeen’s fairy fort, as well as to Jim Muldoon, and Ann Marie McVeigh, for visits to the fairy forts of Letterboy and Monavreece/Moneyvriece.
I’d also like to thank John B. Cunningham for a wonderful and stimulating conversation about the history of Fermanagh in general, as well as the Ederney area in particular. John was also kind enough to send me a number of documents which filled me in on a lot of background that, ultimately could not be fitted into a piece of such brevity. However, I am looking forward to the getting the chance to use that information in the future. At the very least I am delighted that I now know a lot more about the history of the area I grew up in.
As always, many thanks to Paul Fleckney, editor of The Guardian’s Country Diary.
And, finally, because of all those long-ago walks that he insisted on, without which this piece would never have been written, I also have to acknowledge the dog who was my constant companion when I was young. Thank you, Frisky. You were a good boy.
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