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.