Silent White

The mornings are getting lighter now.  Half six doesn't even buy you the early day performance of the jack-dawn chorus.  They're done and dusted by the time you can see your hand in front of your face.

The trees sing though.  Alarm.  Boots on.  Open back door and after a few seconds your ears start registering the voices.  Robin.  Always the robin first.  A bubbling melody, never the same.  Turn the corner to the road and one jenny wren is inevitably shouting from the hedgerow to another not too far away.  A beautiful song, but so loud for such a small chap.  Then the tchik tchik as he gets annoyed that you're walking past his part of the hedge.

Into the car park and the tall trees are alive with song.  Not a lot of variety, teacher-teacher, blue tit, robin and wren, but still the branches seem to bend and pour sound over you.

The drill of a woodpecker echoes in the distance.  And again.  Then the mournful cackling laugh of a green woodpecker over to the right.  When will he find our meadow.

The jays are at it again, swooping in small groups from tree to tree, shreiking at each other in mock annoyance.  A pheasant puts up in the distance.

Nothing spectacular, yet it all heralds the arrival of spring, and all of it is wonderfully reassuring.  The snowdrops, the crocus, the mornings not quite so dark.

And then, and then.  Blimey.  White. Over the reedbed?  White.  Flapping with a seeming urgency yet head poised motionless.  Always moving, quartering, turning. Dropping.

I haven't seen a barn owl near the fen since late 2008 over the meadows on the far side of the Waveney.  Never seen one out here.

He pops up again, doesn't seem to mind me.  Something says he's a juvenile but I don't know why.  He heads off, seemingly not sure of me, then turns back and flies a wide arc.  By this time I'm moving on, and as I track the river and look back over the reedbed he's still there, a yellowy white shape floating over the tops of the reeds.

That's the cue.  Time to dust down the Canon and start the mornings properly.

That was Wednesday,  Yesterday I took the camera and sure enough he was there again.  I even walked the reverse route so I would end up at the spider pools when it was a bit lighter.  It was, but not a lot.  The morning mist merged with grey cloud.  Remember, your brain is a much more powerful microprocesser than a camera, and what you can imagine looks reasonable to your eyes never quite makes it through a camera lens.  So it was with this chap.  He quartered, hunted, dropped, stayed down, lifted and was straight onto it again.  Bollocks.  Gloves off, push hat up head, IS is on, who used my camera, ggrrrrr, ISO's wrong, secondary wheel's turned off, can't get focussing point.  Bollocksbollocksbollocks.  No light to get a flight shot.  He settles on a post.  Autofocus hunts, in, out, in, out.  Come on.  Please.  Snap focus, click.  Off he goes, wheeling away yet that head is perfectly still, his flight is surprisingly ungraceful for so shapely a bird, a bit like he's always got a tailwind and flies with slightly more urgency than needed.  Back. Down.  Wait.  Up and off, then back to the post.  Click click click.

Check watch.  Kee'll want to see this, so pack up and watch over my shoulder as he sets off again.  Brisk walk all the way back to let her get out and have a chance of seeing him,  Oh.  Curtains drawn, all asleep.  Ah well.

No joy today, but three in a row would have been too much.  Still, he's there, Andrew's put up some more boxes and it's still early in the year.  But he's not too far from our meadow.  It's only a short hop as the owl flies.

A walk and no camera

Half six.  Burns night.  Well morning actually.  Time to sort this out.  I've bought the house opposite the Fen so I need to make the most of it.  I haven't properly enjoyed spring for two years, and if I l stay in bed I'll miss it.

Boots, camera, reaction.  Ouch.  Shoulder aches after a few strides, not comfy, I'm really out of practice.  Anyway why did I bring the camera when it's still bloody dark.  Can't see much, not even a hint of light in the sky yet.  Just dark, shapes, some moving, a tawny owl calling, pigeons put up from their tree top roosts.  Should have left the camera, what a stupid idea.

Tarmac is hard on the feet, up through the car park, past the visitor centre, through the gate and out onto the reserve proper.  Still no light.  Where does the path turn left to the spider pool?  Come on man, you've walked this enough times.

Opposite the water trough turn left and squelch through mud.  What the.... I'm surrounded by a pack of Konik ponies.  It's so dark I couldn't even see them.  They don't seem fussed.  I play it cool.  I didn't freak.  Honest.

Onwards.  Past the sign board.  Funny that in the summer this place was scorching hot, we sheltered under a gazebo while looking for Fen Raft Spiders.  Last Winter it was iced over.  And now it's just dark.  Dark, dark, dark.  Nothing to hear, nothing to see. Nothing.  Is the natural world really this benign?

Following the Waveney to the sluice, wow the water's high.  No wonder we've got drainage issues at home.  The fall's all of about six inches, normally a good few feet.  I can only make it out because of the white sheen from the bubbles.  Onwards.

Turn left along the top of Great Fen.  All of a sudden I can see.  Trees.  Shrubs.  That wonderful twisted statue of a mangled tree stump with raw wounds from the chainsaw.

On to the kissing gate by the wood, and jack jack jack jack....and more.  And more.  And more.  They keep coming, the world has woken up, the trees spew black flies from their tops, the sky is filled with tumbling, swirling, jack-jack-jack-jack-jack.  Hundreds, no thousands of them, streaming out towards the visitor centre, still they come.

Nature has awoken.

Two weeks on and this morning the sky is all oiled glass, that purity that comes before sunrise, no trails, no clouds, yet everything in that big sky speaks to the day that is coming.  The jackdaws are now a regular in the trees between the fen and Low Common Road.  Earlier by a few minutes each day, hell I'm going to have to start pushing the alarm clock back to get this.  Extraordinary sight, just a maelstrom of birds crazily chasing each other in and out of the trees, a convulsing body.  And the noise, the sound, the cacophony.  You can only stop, watch, listen and wonder.

Frost underfoot, crunchy mud.  First reed buntings in their natural environment, a stilled reed bed betrayed by the occasional fluttering head, look down the stem and there's a pair.  Beautifully ordinary, just glimpsing round the corner of winter and tasting spring.

No camera for now.  A walk is all that's needed.  Learn, my boy, learn.  Naturalist first, then photographer.  Your rewards will come.