There’s really only one thing to write about this month and that is the discovery of a little bird in my garden that was not just a rarity for Hertfordshire but also the 100th species I have recorded in my garden.
I read an interesting statistic this week! The statistic came from a new government survey – The People and Nature Survey for England – set up to collect data on how people experience and think about the environment.
As the poet William Cowper declared, “Variety’s the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavour.” If so, then nature at this time of year is very spicy! Almost everywhere I go I am stopped in my tracks by the busy-ness of wildlife.
There is one bird that has occupied my thoughts this last month. I have puzzled over how to describe it and express it in words that would somehow do it justice and distill, dare I say even bottle, in words, a little of its magic. The bird itself offers no fine plumage detail that would warrant colourful prose or even a voice that we might call a ‘song’. It is essentially dark brown all over and its voice is best described as a scream; and yet it is master of the skies, unrivalled in aerial dexterity, a resident of the heavens and but a brief visitor to earth. I am of course talking about swifts.
One of the great delights of walking with wildlife in mind is the expectation of the unexpected. It’s a continual treasure hunt filled with familiarity of the regular encounters, the reassurance of seasonal returns and then, every now and again, something unexpected: a little find that rewards and, of course, reinvigorates the hunt (and the hunter!).
When was the last time you saw a bumblebee? For me it was last Wednesday but the expected answer would surely be ‘late summer last year’. I wonder... have you too noticed some unseasonal events occurring in this particularly mild winter? In the same week, a swallow was photographed in Essex and no less than five species of butterfly were recorded in Hertfordshire!
Winter is inescapably grey. Parking on top of the Maltings car park in St Albans today my usually panoramic view of the town and fields beyond is greatly reduced. Layers of mist – shades of grey – have walled the horizon and closed in my visual world. Drops of rain on my face give the greyness an invasive quality, threatening to absorb me into the landscape to become just another grey shape in a grey world. Only a few hours after sunrise and it feels as if dawn has faltered or that dusk is already upon us.
I may not jump at the sight of a mouse or spider but I have been known to leap around at the sight of a leech!
September sees off summer and by October we know winter is at the door!
