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Nature Notes

Nature Notes 35: One Sunday Morning in February

Sunshine streamed through the curtains. All looked fine outside, a light frost on only the roof. A morning to get on the road - east first, then north and around. I hurried to get out.

I soon realised there was a relentless wall of cold north-westerly wind. All the puddles were frozen, cubes of ice torn out and spread across the road by early drivers. Not much seemed to be happening this day. Banks of snowdrops were the only flowers to have survived the recent snow and Arctic air. Woods were dark and brooding on the horizon, but as I cycled through they were filled with the spring song of tom tits and great tits, and the glory song of chaffinches all around. Two heavy-legged chestnut shires lumbered across a field, looking for company. Farm yards were quiet, waiting for spring. Many hedgerows had been flailed, and do not look good. Branches ripped from branches, trunks of old oaks smeared with damage. The green growth of spring will hide this all, but not for another two months. Wheat fields showed yellowed signs of cold damage. A flock of fifty wood pigeons lifted from a purple-green field of rape, then glided as one to funnel down into the vegetation again.

Two people dressed smartly, one with silk scarf and the other with cravat, were walking towards a church; three with a dog were walking away. In Boxford, it is chucking out time at the church, and there was chaos. Cars pulled over on the pavement, unwilling to give way. Others edged past, wing mirrors touching. I had to watch and wait. The sermon must have been troubling.

I stopped at fresh concrete standing by a wheat field. This has been a farm cottage as long as I could remember, growing its very own brambles and loaded roof of ivy, subsiding slowly into the land. Now there were two piles of rubble, one of large pieces, the other of small, much smashed brick and soil. And oddly, very many cockle shells, so far from the sea.

 

Many other cyclists are out, looking professional. In the teeth of the wind, I jumped on the back of one train as it overtook, and hitched a tow for a couple of miles. I sweated much but never warmed up over the whole forty miles. It was a day for being inside rather than out. Now the woodstove is lit, flaming heat into the sunlit room.

The summer grasses

As if the warriors were a dream

(Matsuo Bashō, 1644-94)