On an ideal spring morning, with bright sun and
temperatures more like May, I would usually expect to hear skylarks above our
dunes, fields and commons, but can find only one. They will appear in the weeks
ahead, but it looks as though the bad winter, and their continued steady
decline over recent years may be to blame. There are no parachuting meadow
pipits, or perky stonechats either; perhaps I should be more patient, but
Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’, climate change and modern pesticides ring
uneasily in my head.
The woodlands and alder carr at Oxwich Marsh smell of
emerging water mint. In sheltered glades, wrens, robins and nonchalant
blackbirds sing; blue tits on the other hand are definitely few and far between.
The distant yaffle of a green woodpecker reminds me that I read recently of
their unexplained demise in Pembrokeshire, but not so here. Shining new
brimstone and peacock butterflies make for the sun and settle; maybe this will
be a better year for them.
On such a perfect day, no swallows or martins feed over
the marsh; but they come and go at this time of year. Virgin shoots of reeds
break the surface in the reed bed and the brown looking marsh is gradually
wakening up. Grey herons glide towards open flashes, and at least half a dozen
Cetti’s warblers pump out song from deep vegetation; these new colonists from
the south have survived the ravages of winter too. There’s real spring song in
the Garden Lane; willow warblers, chiffchaffs, a bubbling blackcap, and an
early reed warbler. Invisible in deep cover, it delivers its non-spectacular
song a good week earlier than normal.
There are so many reports of ‘first cuckoos’ at this time
of the year, but there was a reliable one just west of here yesterday. Cuckooflowers
in the hedgerows however are not to be doubted; there’s something believable in
old wives’ tales after all.
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