by Stephen Moss
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
But Hardy’s portrait is quietly evocative:
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
I have always had a sneaking suspicion, however, that Hardy may be referring to a mistle thrush, a songster that begins very early in the year (Hardy’s poem is set at the close of December, rather than in Browning’s springtime), and is well known for continuing to sing, even during strong winter winds – hence its folk name of ‘stormcock’.
As I go about my daily chores I can hear the thrush’s song, the sound penetrating through the thick, ancient walls to reach my ear wherever I am in the house. Its repetitive, measured rhythm makes it one of the most characteristic of all British birdsongs, and among the easiest to recognise. To me, it always seems as if the bird is addressing the listener directly – conducting a conversation, if you like. But it is a fairly one-sided conversation: the thrush hardly stops to pause for breath, let alone allow me to answer him.
I am reminded of a story my grandmother used to tell me when I was a child. She recalled her father, Edgar Snow, telling her that when he was a young man in Devonshire a bird would call out his name, coupled with a pecuniary instruction: ‘Snowy, Snowy – Pay the rent! Pay the rent!’ The songster could only have been a song thrush – no other common bird is quite so direct and insistent in its vocal style.
So whenever I hear ‘my’ song thrush, or indeed any other, my mind is taken back almost a century, to the years before the First World War, when my great-grandfather was amused by the song of one of this bird’s distant ancestors.
IN THE NEIGHBOURING village of Blackford, half a mile to the east, the rooks are already checking out their nests in the churchyard. Rooks love churchyards, for one simple reason. In the past, these holy places would have been one of the few places these glossy blue-black birds would have been safe from the shotgun. Loathed for their habit of flocking together to feed on grain, and for their alleged attacks on newborn lambs, rooks have always been regarded as the farmer’s enemy.
In another sense, though, the farmer is the rook’s friend. For before the neolithic ancestors of today’s farmers first tilled the soil and grew crops, rooks must have been far less common and widespread. Today they are the quintessential bird of open fields, found throughout rural Britain. Generally ignored, by birdwatchers as well as by ordinary folk, they deserve more attention than they usually get; though I confess that I, too, often take them for granted.
Across the road from the churchyard stands the old school, founded in 1832, its function clearly declared on a plaque displayed inside the building:
For the purpose of educating the children of the
poor in the Chapelry of Blackford, according to
the principles of the Established Church.
The school has long since been converted into the village hall, where the locals gather for children’s birthday parties, ballet lessons and community events. But older villagers still recall that during particularly wet winters, some pupils used to arrive by boat; and although winter flooding is no longer as extensive as it once was, the route from the south may still sometimes be navigable.
Meanwhile, the season is advancing slowly but surely, in tiny, almost unnoticeable increments, marked by the marginally later arrival of sunset each day. So at four o’clock on a cold and windy afternoon in early February, there is just enough light for boys and girls from the local school to come and play before they catch the bus home. Full of pent-up energy, they chase each other around the playground, blissfully unaware that, close by, one of the first true signs of spring has already begun to emerge.
As I sit and watch my own children on the slide and swings, I notice something out of the corner of my eye. A lone hazel tree, in the hedgerow separating the playground from the next field, is covered with bunches of long, greenish-yellow catkins. They hang in groups of three or four, each catkin about the length of my thumb, and superficially resembling a rather thin caterpillar in shape. Like newborn lambs and Easter bunnies, hazel catkins are one of the key events of early spring – an association which, along with their drooping appearance, has given them the country name of ‘lamb’s tails’.
Although we call them catkins, they are in fact flowers – but flowers that don’t have to wait until later in the season to bloom. Because their pollen is carried by the wind, rather than insects, it is better for the catkins to appear when there are no leaves on the trees to block the pollen’s spread. Hence their emergence so early, often when there is still snow on the ground.
But these long, showy objects only tell half the story. They are all male, while the female flowers are so small and unobtrusive it is easy to miss them. I look more closely, and can just make out a tiny crimson tuft sprouting out of a swollen bud: the female flower. Once pollination has occurred, and the flower has been fertilised, it will begin to grow into a cluster of nuts. These will slowly ripen until early autumn, when they will fall to the ground below, providing much-needed food for woodpeckers, voles and wood mice.
Archaeologists have discovered that towards the end of the Middle Stone Age, about 6,000 or 7,000 years ago, the hazel spread rapidly north and west, far beyond its original home range. I imagine a hungry traveller grabbing a handful of hazelnuts to quell his appetite, picking some more to eat later, then heading off on his journey. Later on, he must have dropped or discarded them; and by this happy accident the tree spread northwards, so that today, it can be found throughout Britain.
FROM THE HIGH point of the parish church, Little Moor Road winds slowly downhill towards the south-east. It runs past a modern housing estate, a field of alpacas and a sign selling horse manure, before reaching large, open fields, full of fieldfares and lapwings.
These birds, so dominant during this late-winter season, will not be here for long. Within a month the fieldfares will have headed back to Scandinavia. The lapwings do not go quite so far; indeed some will travel just a short distance to Tealham Moor, bouncing around in the warm spring air during their acrobatic courtship displays.
The fields here are bounded with thorny hedgerows, studded with rows of gnarled, pollarded willows, their trunks covered with ivy. In silhouette, each is shaped like a clenched fist holding a bunch of twigs – a characteristic feature of the landscape right across the Somerset Levels.
A little further along the lane, I stumble across a scene of pure carnage. A line of willows, each reduced to a crude, bare stump, the cut wood glowing with the freshness of the sap, its grain shading from off-white to a yellowish-brown. All around, there are untidy piles of withies – the long, slender twigs of the willow – while the roadway is strewn with offcuts.
This may look like an act of wanton vandalism, but the process is vital both for the continued survival of the trees themselves and to the ecology of the area. Willow trees need pollarding every two or three years to retain their shape. In a month or two the cut bark will have darkened, the new twigs begun to sprout, and the trees will once again merge back into their ancestral landscape.
Widely used in folk medicine, both to staunch bleeding and to reduce fever, the willow was once an important local crop, making a range of products from baskets to cricket bats. Most of the larger rhynes have a row of willows along their banks, and the sound of the wind blowing through their foliage may have given rise to the belief that a willow tree will follow a lone walker on a dark night, muttering to itself.
Two examples reveal the central place of willow in local culture. First the creation, in 2001, of a giant sculpture – the Willow Man – which stands in a field alongside the western side of the M5 near Bridgwater. Created by local artist Serena de la Hey, this huge, iconic figure is one of the most striking examples of public
art in Britain: Somerset’s very own Angel of the North. Holidaymakers caught in bank holiday traffic jams have plenty of time to admire this extraordinary figure, whose scale only becomes clear when a crow or buzzard perches on his head, revealing his true size. He is known locally, and rather irreverently, either as the Wicker Man, or simply ‘Alan’, after the TV presenter Alan W(h)icker.
The other unusual use of willow relates to the untimely death, in 2003, of pop star and actor Adam Faith. His wife had heard about a Somerset firm which makes wicker coffins, and arranged for Faith to be buried in one. Her unusual choice hit the headlines, and led to a surge in demand for this environmentally friendly means of interment. Today, like Somerset cider, willow is being marketed as a ‘green’ product, perfectly in tune with our modern, ecologically aware age.
FROM THE CROSSROADS on Mark Moor, the long, straight line of River Road runs southwards to the River Brue, the farthest boundary of the parish from my home. The view here is all sky and open fields, and as befits this more intensively farmed landscape there is not a lot of winter wildlife: just a few gulls loafing around in a muddy field, with a couple of crows and a buzzard.
By the junction with Tile House Road, heading westwards to Brent Knoll, a bright green sign informs me I am standing next to Brickhouse Sluice. This crosses one of the widest rhynes in the parish, New Rhyne. The metal structure of the sluice gate once again reminds me that this whole landscape was, not so very long ago, beneath the waves.
As I gaze down the length of the rhyne, a dozen or so teal catch sight of me and take off, flying 100 yards or so away from me until they feel safe. They land again on the water and look around warily, constantly alert to the possibility of danger.
The teal is our smallest duck, barely half the length of a mallard, and only a quarter of its weight. The male is a neat little bird, especially in his newly acquired breeding plumage: his green head offset by a chestnut eyepatch, mottled greyish flanks, and a narrow yellow line running down the side of his body as if carefully painted there by a human hand. The female, as with most ducks, is rather dull – or if you prefer, subtle – her buffs and browns enabling her to stay camouflaged when on the nest.
A flock of teal is, rather appropriately, known as a ‘spring’; and if you have ever flushed these diminutive ducks as you walk across the boggy fields, you’ll know why. Panicked into flight, they fly up into the air as if shot from a catapult, and so are coveted by wildfowlers for their speed and agility.
Further along the rhyne I notice two smaller birds, diving down into the murky water, then bobbing up again like animated corks. Even tinier than a moorhen or teal, these are our smallest waterbird, the little grebe or dabchick.
Dabchicks, as their name suggests, look rather like the offspring of a duck or moorhen; so tiny you cannot believe they are indeed full-grown. At this time of year they are greyish-brown with a fluffy white rear-end. But in a month or so they will moult into their handsome breeding garb: richer and darker, with a deep chestnut-brown neck, and the tiniest lime-green spot behind their bill, as if someone has daubed on a dash of luminous paint. This is a colour rarely seen in nature, and all the more striking for that.
At the end of River Road, by a sharp left turn towards Burtle and Glastonbury, there is a bridge over the Brue where I once disturbed a flock of goosander, our largest freshwater duck. The turning is next to a small but imposing house, which flies the Union flag, as if marking a border; which in a sense it does.
On the side of the bridge, out of sight to anyone but the curious pedestrian, a dull metal plate is fastened to the stonework by rusty screws. It reads:
IN. MEMORY OF. ALBERT E. WATTS.
WHO WAS. KILLED ON. THIS BRIDGE
NOV 18 TH 1898. AGED 33.0 YEARS
LEFT. A. WIFE. AND FIVE. CHILDREN
The ragged capital letters and random punctuation suggest the plaque was made by a friend, perhaps, rather than an experienced signwriter; lending the memorial a greater degree of poignancy.
A few weeks after noticing this, I learn the true story behind it, over a pint in the White Horse Inn with Steve, a local schoolteacher. I had assumed that the unfortunate Albert Watts had been killed while building, or perhaps repairing, the bridge; or had been the victim of an early hit-and-run accident. In one way he was: it turns out he was bashed over the head and thrown into the River Brue late one night, after a row with another villager. A young man was tried for the murder, but acquitted for lack of firm evidence. Steve tells me that years later a father and son were overheard in the midst of an intense argument, during which the son shouted at his father, ‘I almost swung for you once.’ Circumstantial evidence, but pretty convincing all the same.
I TURN TO head home, and my eye is caught by the rapid movement of a flock of birds over the big, wide field to the north of the river. Five hundred lapwings fly up into the air, along with a dozen smaller and more streamlined birds: golden plovers. Their high-pitched calls reach me on the chilly air; an evocative, whistling sound, reminding me of days spent in some of Britain’s wildest places.
Immediately something about these birds – their tautness, and close, almost uncomfortable proximity to one another – makes me guess the identity of the creature I am about to see. A moment later I pick up a dark grey shape heading off into the distance towards Glastonbury Tor, its stiff posture and shallow wingbeats belying its speed and agility. It is, as I had already guessed, a peregrine falcon, utterly ignoring the lapwings and golden plovers, and flying nonchalantly away.
It may have forgotten them, but the lapwings and plovers can still remember the peregrine. Panicked, they fly south, then back north again, hovering over the field where they have been feeding as if wondering whether to land or not. Behaving almost as a single organism, with one mind and an infinitely flexible body, the flock occasionally splits in two, before rapidly regrouping in a narrow, fluttering line. Some birds tentatively float down towards the dark earth; but the mob mentality still rules, and at the very last moment, within touching distance of the ground, they fly back up again to rejoin their companions.
This is a crucial decision. Missing out on half an hour’s feeding before dusk could make the difference between surviving the night or not. But leaving the safety of the flock could bring a much more rapid death in the predator’s talons.
Ten more minutes pass, and still the birds hang above the field, collectively wasting their precious energy reserves. Once again a few individuals fold their wings and begin to whiffle down; and once again they change their minds, as if they are attached to the flock by a piece of elastic, and being pulled back up against their will. I can sense their desperation to land, and spend those last few minutes of daylight feeding; but I can also feel their acute sense of fear.
I remember when peregrines first began to turn up in southern Britain in winter, and the sheer panic that ensued whenever one would appear. Only a few years later, sightings of these mighty predators had become so regular that other birds mostly ignored them. How strange birds’ minds must be: imprinted to instinctively recognise and fear something they rarely see, but which may bring sudden death.
Here in the parish, where peregrines are still not a regular sight, a healthy fear remains. Yet ironically, the peregrine is long gone by now; and the lapwings and golden plovers should be going to roost for the night. If they have any sense they will fly half a mile east to Tealham Moor, where they can sit on flooded fields, safe from the local foxes. But still they stay in the darkening sky, unwilling – or unable – to make landfall.
EXPERIENCES SUCH AS this – unexpected encounters where I gain a privileged insight into the lives of our fellow creatures – make me realise the advantages of spending time in one, small, bounded area. For as other naturalists have discovered before me, a single place can provide a multitude of experiences: from the commonplace to the unusual, and the whole spectrum in between.
Being in one place is also the best way to understand the passing of the seasons: not
the great shifts between winter and spring, summer and autumn, which we all notice; but the tiny, subtle changes that occur almost imperceptibly, from week to week, and day to day, throughout the year.
Gilbert White, walking the lanes and footpaths of his Hampshire parish of Selborne, knew this; as did my greatest inspiration among naturalists, the poet John Clare. Clare’s story has been told often enough for me not to go into much detail here: his birth and upbringing in poverty, in a Northamptonshire village at the turn of the nineteenth century; his powers of observation that enabled him to document the wildlife of his parish; and of course his extraordinary poetical gift. The naturalist James Fisher famously described Clare as ‘the finest poet of Britain’s minor naturalists, and the finest naturalist of Britain’s major poets’.
Just as White did, and I am doing now, Clare made most of his observations in the fields, woods and byways within a mile or two of his home. When it came to natural heritage, Clare’s Helpston was pretty commonplace. But that is exactly the point: places like Selborne, Helpston and my own parish may be ordinary, but like any parish in the whole of the British Isles, extraordinary events are nevertheless taking place among the local wildlife.
My favourite of Clare’s many poems on nature is a modest little sonnet, entitled ‘Emmonsailes Heath in Winter’. The opening lines plunge the reader straight into the landscape, as if sharing the poet’s own experience:
I love to see the old heath’s withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps his melancholly wing,
And oddling crow in idle motion swing
On the half-rotten ash tree’s topmost twig …
