As the days passed, they grew and grew and the nest started to feel cramped. The juveniles were getting bigger every day and gaining their grey feathers.
Soon enough, it would be time. Time for them to take that huge step and leave the nest. Their wings were not strong enough to fly out like the adults would do many times a day, so this leap of faith really was the first challenge.
It took a few false starts before a juvenile left, dropping into the running water below and floating downstream a little before climbing onto a rock. Making its way towards the adult dippers, the juvenile was soon rewarded with some well-deserved food. Getting used to the running water and foraging was the second challenge.
The juvenile explored the sandbank, curiously dipping its head into the edges of the water. In one quick movement the world changed: the rushing water transformed into an eerie stillness, and the bright day into a blue-tinted world. Everything moved much more slowly in the water.
Or so it seemed.
The current pulled this way and that, and trying to catch those tiny insects hiding in the stony substrate proved harder than it originally seemed. Scrambling back to dry land, the juvenile realised that, for now, it was easier to make a lot of noise and wait for the adult to arrive with food.
With each day came more practice: stretching their wings and flying just that bit further each time; using their wings underwater to stabilise their weight and stay under; learning how to grip the unsettled substrate with their strong feet, staying below for a few extra seconds and grabbing the insects and fish.
After a couple of weeks the juveniles were becoming independent, no longer relying on the adults for food. Flying was second nature now, giving them freedom to go wherever they pleased. It was time to move on, fly away from home and find their own territory. Become adults.
Katie Halsall, 2016
Spring drew on: she was indeed already come; the frosts of winter had ceased; its snows were melted, its cutting winds ameliorated. My wretched feet, flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January, began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings of April; the nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the very blood in our veins; we could now endure the play-hour passed in the garden: sometimes on a sunny day it began even to be pleasant and genial, and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps. Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves; snow-drops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and golden-eyed pansies. On Thursday afternoons (half-holidays) we now took walks, and found still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside, under the hedges.
I discovered, too, that a great pleasure, an enjoyment which the horizon only bounded, lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls of our garden: this pleasure consisted in prospect of noble summits girdling a great hill-hollow, rich in verdure and shadow; in a bright beck, full of dark stones and sparkling eddies. How different had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow! – when mists as chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds along those purple peaks, and rolled down ‘ing’ and holm till they blended with the frozen fog of the beck! That beck itself was then a torrent, turbid and curbless: it tore asunder the wood, and sent a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its banks, that showed only ranks of skeletons.
April advanced to May: a bright serene May it was; days of blue sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its duration. And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847
Spring, and the children have the sort of infectious, giddy, butterfly restlessness they do on windy days. I can feel it too.
Walking through the woods to school, there is so much to see: late frogspawn bobs below the surface of the pond like jelly with eyes and a comma butterfly basks on a tree stump, scallop-edged wings like pencil sharpenings. A few more children stop to see what we are looking at and the butterfly folds its wings as their shadows fall on it, pleating its bright colours into dark camouflage. I point out the little white punctuation mark on each wing that is newly familiar to some of the children, a comma that indicates the term the butterfly must serve in its life sentence: the torpor of hibernation. They like this, they think it’s neat. This is one butterfly they will remember.
Then, in the woods behind school, in the low crook of a birch, a drift of downy fluff has collected into the shape of an owl. It is an owl: a tawny owlet, around twenty-five days old and very recently out of its nest. Covered in dove-grey, softly barred feathers, its round face has an aged, pinkish appearance. Against the white and damson ribbons of the peeling birch bark, it is well camouflaged.
It gazes at us, unblinking, with huge eyes. We keep our distance. The parents will be watching nearby, weighing their response to the unknown threat we pose. We show other children and parents, who are delighted but concerned – something must be wrong. I find myself doing some urgent PR. It’s fine, I reassure them. Baby owls often plop out of trees, branching out from the nest hole before they can fly, or sometimes, balancing to poo off the edge of the nest, they fall out backwards (the children are beside themselves with the thought of this). They can climb back up. I even identify Mum for them, although we can’t see her, showing the children how to listen for the mixed flock of little birds haranguing her further off.
Some of the children remind me of what happened the previous autumn. A neighbour brought me a dead tawny owl that had swooped in front of her car and been killed instantly and unavoidably. She was mortified, but thought I’d like to see it. I had better plans than that. Apart from a half-closed eye, it appeared undamaged. I took it into school. Any apprehension or squeamishness from the children disappeared as soon as they saw the owl, not quite believing it was real. They crowded round, incredulous, thrilled, and of course because the bird was dead there was no need to be quiet and they could touch it as much as they wanted. They felt the depth and density of the layered feathers, the sharpness of its beak, its great furred legs and curved claws and explored the strange-shaped, gripping Brillo pads on its feet. When I spread the wings out, like a dappled Spanish fan, they saw into a wood at night and gasped in awe. I pulled out my hand lens to show them the fringed feather edges that soften and lull wind resistance to an absolute hush. For a few moments then there was silence, and something like reverence; the bird was so alive for them that they seemed to be waiting for it to wake up and fly away. It lived in their imaginations for a long time.
We track the tawny owlet over the next two days and discover a sibling. Both are quite mobile, appearing in different trees at different heights among a natural trellis of ivy and honeysuckle vine. But there is still concern as to whether all is well. One has a lost, lopsided look. Shouldn’t something be done? Surely the parents have abandoned them?
On the third afternoon, at ten past three, one of the chicks is leaning sleepily against the buttress of an oak like a remnant snowman, its head as big as its body. It has one eye half open and is just yards from the school gates. It is oddly conspicuous: a fine, graphite pencil drawing propped against a technicolour photographic background. I make a decision. It can’t stay where it is and I am going to have to hide it.
I scout out a tree eight steps away, scanning for signs of the adults. I pull my thin coat over my hands, tie my hood tightly around my face and pick up the little bird. Too young to defend itself, there is no hissing or beak-snapping and its ineffectual wi
ngs remain folded like the pages of an old, foxed book. Its soft body is warm and I can feel the lightness of its hollow bones. I clasp the owlet to me and creep, head lowered in half-anticipation, to the safer place I have chosen.
I never heard her coming.
The element of surprise is exquisite. Her attack is succinct, well aimed and performed in absolute silence. The sudden whack on the side of my head is decisive and slightly muffled, like a blow from the sweeping end of a broom or a cricket ball hidden in a cushion, a whumpf, where the only sound comes from the bird’s contact with me. I feel the passing rasp of a talon dulled by a layer of nylon.
I never even saw her.
I keep my head down and act quickly, placing the chick out of obvious sight, and retreat. Had I felt her presence and turned, my left eye would have been exposed and probably met her talon. I think of the pioneering wildlife photographer Eric Hosking, who famously lost his left eye to a tawny mother in 1939.
My attacker calls a series of soft, low ‘kwicks’ to her chick in comfort and reassurance. It answers. We are all OK. I can hear the children coming out of school. I lower my hood and reach to feel a spot of blood, my left ear still ringing from the cuff. I can’t stop grinning. It was a thrilling encounter. For a moment, I felt what it might be like to be a bank vole.
Nicola Chester, 2016
Spring
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look like little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and looms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worth the winning.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877
In the two months from the end of the third week of March to the end of the third week of May, there is accomplished the most rapid contrast of the year: a few summer birds may have come to us before this period begins, but with these few exceptions it includes the arrival of all our summer birds; the transition from cold to warmth; from dark bare branches to thick green trees. It is well sometimes to heighten the enjoyment of the best days of May by recalling some typical day of the preceding March. An instance may be taken from salmon-fishing in spring. The angler had spent a week on the river Spey in March, and one day in particular dwelt in his mind. As far as sport was concerned, it had not been unsuccessful, and when that is so, no stress of weather can destroy his pleasure. About three o’clock in the afternoon, bent on turning a day of fair into one of really good sport, he was advancing into a broad strong stream to wade as far out as the current would allow and as deep as he dared to go: a blizzard met him full in the face, with buffeting wind and blinding multitudes of snowflakes: the deciduous trees were stark and bare: in that stern week there was little song in the woods even of thrush or wren: on the river, apart from dippers, the only lively and constant evidence of birds was the presence of black-headed gulls and oyster-catchers. The latter birds are very noisy at that time of year. They are often in parties of three, and the exceeding restlessness gives the impression that two birds are perpetually trying to escape from the presence of a third, whose company is tedious and unwelcome; but whether this is an intrusive male or a superfluous female, I cannot say, for the sexes are alike in plumage, and I have not observed the birds to fight, as rival males would probably do.
Such were the conditions and the aspect of the place in March. In the latter part of May the angler was there once more; he had chanced on a cold week of March; it was now one of the warm weeks of May. The river was still broad and in fair order, though not so full as in March: the fishing had declined from good to fair: but it was sufficient to keep him keen and at work. There came a moment when the contrast with March was thought of and enjoyed. Again he was wading deep in the stream; behind him were some acres covered with whin, broom, wild raspberry and other wilful growths: in these thickets were some sedge-warblers and white-throats, and their songs came to him repeatedly; the sun shone warmly, the broom was coming out, but the whin was in full flower and fragrance; a light breeze brought the wonderful scent about him. Is the whole air ever so wonderfully and gratefully fragrant as when it is pervaded by the scent of whin? New-mown hay or a beanfield in flower are rare delights, but the flower of whin is best of all. The scent is fresh and invigorating, and yet so rich and luscious that it suggests apricots: it is as if the apricot had been designed in order to transmute part of the excellence of the scent of whin into something that could be perceived by another sense than that of smell. At any rate, both the scent and the fruit have this in common, that each is only to be known to perfection when warm in a hot sun. The whin is suited to the British climate; it needs no hot weather to enable it to flower and ripen its seeds. A cool summer does not discontent it; but it cannot endure extreme cold, and is grateful for our mild winters: it is essentially a plant for a gulf-stream climate. A stray flower of whin may be picked, so far as anything so prickly can be picked at all, on most bushes in every month of the year; but it is in May that every bush of whin is a glorious blaze of colour. Later in the summer, on a warm day there is a sporadic ticking noise amongst the whins: it is the opening of the dry seed-pods.
But I have now digressed enough. It is difficult when writing of outdoor things to keep to one subject, even that of birds – the world, as Robert Louis Stevenson says, ‘is so full of a number of things’ – and it is time to return to the proper subject of the book. The oyster-catchers are still about the river in May, but they are less noisy and restless than they were in March. They have eggs to attend to. These are laid out on shingle, with no attempt by the bird to hide them; but their pattern is so cunningly devised that the whole bed of shingle is their concealment.
To the bird life on the river, May has now added two common species of summer birds – terns and sandpipers. The flight of terns is graceful, light and airy, a delight to the eye; the voice is harsh. Sandpipers give an impression of happy affection, as a pair flit about together, piping pleasantly as if each enjoyed the other’s company. My recollection is that both birds pipe; but there are details like this that one may for years take for granted, and then suddenly question with a desire for more particular observation.
To all this must be added the full song of woodland birds; the long vibrating notes of curlews, the first fresh green of deciduous trees and geans with their abundant delicate white flower. Year after year all this loveliness for eye and ear recurs: in early days, in youth, it was anticipated with confidence; in later years, as the season approaches, experience and age qualify the confidence with apprehension lest clouds of war or civil strife, or some emergency of work, or declining health, or some other form of human ill may destroy the pleasure or even the sight of it: and when once again it has been enjoyed we have a sense of gratitude greater than in the days of confident and thoughtless youth. Perhaps the memory of those days, having become part of our being, helps us in later life to enjoy each passing season. In every May, with the same beauty of sight and sound, ‘we do beget that golden time again’.
Sir Edward Grey, The Charm of Birds, 1927
May
May. 2.
Tortoise marches about: eats part of a piece of cucumber-paring.
May. 6.
Made a hot-bed for the hand glasses. I opened a hen swift, which a cat had caught, & found she was in high condition, very plump & fat: in her body were the rudiments of several eggs, two of which wer
e larger than the rest, & would probably have been produced this season. Cats often catch swifts as they swoop to go up under the eaves of low houses. The cock red-breast is a gallant bird, & feeds his hen as they hop about on the walks, who receives his bounty with great pleasure, shivering with her wings, & expressing much complacency.
[Inserted leaf]
The quantity of rain that fell at Selborne between May 1st, 1779, & May 1st, 1780.
inch
hund
In May, 1779
2
71
June
2
0
July
5
35
August
2
12
September
3
22
October
4
03
November
2
66
December
6
28
January, 1780
1
80
February
1
03
March
1
92
April
3
57
36
69
May. 7.
Wild cherries in bloom make a fine show in my hedges.
May. 8.
The Lathraea sqammaria grows also on the banks of Trimming’s orchard, just above the dry wall, opposite Grange-yard.
Spring Page 13