19th May 2012.  Wonderful Otmoor.  Cool and overcast with a breeze from the east.  I was looking for Hobbies, Cuckoos and Turtle Doves.  Once more, the area around the car park dripped with bird song and the damp air amplified and clarified it all.  Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff, Blackbird, Whitethroat, Robin and Blackcap.  I swim in the sound and celebrate the work of the RSPB here.  Worth every penny of my subscription. 

A Hobby drifted over.  A wonderful sign, and it is a joy always when these birds return.  I wander slowly along the path, ears open the the reeling of Grasshoper Warblers and the rolling purr of Turtle Doves.  Eyes peeled for Grass Snakes and Cuckoos.  Senses alive.  Feeling the caress of the air. 

We watch Hares chasing each other and I try to take some pictures.  Redshank and Oystercatchers peep and pipe.  Lapwings.  Lapwings.  PeeeeuuuuWIT.  More Hobbies are hunting now over the reeds.  A Red Kite wanders over and is joined instantly by defending Lapwings.  He gives up and turns back.  A Buzzard is mobbed by a Magpie while lightning fast Swifts work the ditches for insects.  Life.  Tiny Long Tailed Tits work through the hedges dripping with Hawthorn and a Peregrine scatters an alarm of skittering life before it.  I drink it in.  My heart is with a Hobby.

Mid May and it has finally stopped raining.  Suddenly, the hedgerows are verdant and dripping with bird song while Small White and Orange Tip butterflies hurry along the rides.  Farmoor. 

Mid May.  And at Farmoor a cuckoo is calling.  Now near, now far, and we glimpse him briefly high in a tree before he disappears and we loose him on the far side of the river.  We listen to Reed Warblers chat chat talk talk yes yes no no did he did he har har well well too bad and suddenly a Kingfisher, saphire bright in the mid May mid day sun in Oxfordshire is hovering right before our eyes before landing in a tree all too brief and then gone.  Retless jewel.  If you were there for decades of my life you would be gone too soon.  We walk through sparkling daisies and meadow buttercups you could drink gold from.  Cowslips dance and nod.  A little spring morris dance.  Two canada Geese take their five golden gifts for a first swim and a Garden Warbler pours out liquid spring on to the damp earth.  The light shines through the feathers of a Kestrel hovering in the deepest blue and sun drops sparkle in the wet grass.

It is late Spring.  The acid green of Oak leaves now break against this deepest blue.  A Wheatear surprises us.  Grey Herons stalk.  The scratchy scratchy song of Whitethroats fills the hedges while Swifts snap in the air above.  May.

I watched my first episode of this Channel 4 series last night.  It is really interesting how our attitude to foxes has changed over the last ten or twenty years.  About ten years ago, a vixen took up residence in our garden and for a few wonderful weeks we watched fox cubs playing on our patio every evening.  What an absolute delight.  Well done Channel 4.  Only good will come of it.

PS – Am I the only person who quite likes the smell of fox marking?

Good news.  I have now created an album of my best photographs in Flickr.  To access, just click on the link below in my links.

28th April 2012, Ham Wall and Shapwick Heath, Somerset.  You can’t let the English weather stop you from doing things and Saturday morning brought a deluge to Wiltshire and Somerset.  The Somerset levels.  Avalon.  This place is wonderful.  Glastonbury gazes down and Cuckoos cuckoo in reeds as they have done so since the Sweet Track began to slice a tentative sliver through the dangerous marsh.  This is where, according to Tennyson, Sir Bedevere stood long, revolving many memories and rapt in thought until the wailing on the mere died away.  Today, the wailing on the mere is from Marsh Harriers.  And when I see a Marsh Harrier, especially when I see a male Marsh Harrier, I want to fall to my knees and worship.  A male Marsh Harrier fills all of nature with it’s dreadful and haunting beauty.  The sky is littered with Swifts, Sand Martins and Swallows.  Shapes and sillouhettes driven here by an ancient wind.  Tennyson saw them.  So did Bedevere.  So did the prehistoric builders of the Sweet Track.  The builders of Glastonbury watched them.  They are back.  It’s spring.

Bitterns boom.  In fact, Bitterns here are booming and you can hear their low and deep ancient talk here.  It’s another RSPB success story.  If you have never heard a Bittern boom, get an empty glass bottle and blow across the top of it.  That’s it.  Bitterns.  My heart breaks with joy at the sound.  My heart breaks with joy at the sight of a male Marsh Harrier quartering Meare Heath.  The wailing on the mere.  I want to fall to my knees and worship.  The rain is grey and the air is cold.  Beauty is everywhere.  You just need to open your eyes.

Saturday 21st April 2012 ~ Otmoor, Oxfordshire.  Not only was Lewis Carroll inspired by this place, but so was JRR Tolkein for whom it was apperntly the inspiration for Farmer Giles of Ham.  We arrived in to a soundscape of the delicate silvery laughter of Willow Warblers punctuated by the urgency of Chiffchaffs.  Skylark song poured down on to us from little black dots.  Otmoor. 

We had just missed some Ring Ouzels but did see a Yellowhammer at the feeders and we watched Lapwings swoop and pipe their extraordinary sqeaky electronic calls.  Then.  Suddenly, and distantly, a cuckoo.  Did you hear it?  No.  There!  Listen!  There again!  Yes yes yes.  Cuckoo.  At Otmoor. 

I have watched these wonderful and dangerously threatened birds at Otmoor perform strange and heartbreakingly beautiful slow motion flights and been transported by the babbling of the females.  Beethoven used the famous two tone song of the males in his sixth symphony, Pastoral.  Joy of joys.  Cuckoos.  At Otmoor.  Skylark song pours down like silver and fills my cup till it runneth over.  It’s spring in England.  And if you want to see a staggering example of the work of the RSPB and how they have got it so so right here, then visit Otmoor.  Like the Peregrine we watch, sitting in a tree (the Peregrine, not us), and the Redshank and the Little Ringed Plover, and the New~Mum Mallard with golden chicks in tow who try (and succeed) in running on the surface of the water.  And the fabulous Red Kites who’s re-introduction near here has been such a success.  And the Kestrel hovering, and the hundreds of tiny hunting spiders running under your feet.  And the deer, and the Hares.  And, in a few weeks from now, the Hobbies and the Turtle Doves. Otmoor.  How unbelievably lucky am I to be living at this time.