If you look carefully the signs of Spring’s return are all around us right now.
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Migrants’ return
The other evening, cycling back home, I saw my first swallows of the year. After their Winter stay in sub-Saharan Africa these tired vagabonds were whipping across the British countryside, heading to the site where they will raise a new family. Four of them flew straight over me, chirruping as they went. Silhouetted as they were against the pink and cream sunset, I couldn’t see their colours, but I could pick out their forked tails, and I imagined their bright red breasts and bold, navy blue backs.
The birdguides website is increasingly littered with sightings of ring ouzels, and even the first cuckoos have started returning, ready to poach valuable real estate in other birds’ nests then scarper and leave unsuspecting parents of reed warbler chicks to do all the hard work raising the next generation of cuckoos.
Small and beautiful
Our lives are so often focussed on the big and seemingly important. Spring is a time of year that reminds us of beauty in the small things. A butterfly hanging on the underside of a leaf is a tiny detail that can get lost in the enormity of the world, the big questions and worries which occupy us.
But pausing to notice creatures like this can change our perspective and our thought patterns. For me it certainly alters my priorities and forces me to slow down. It works in the same way as mindfulness and meditation do. It focuses me on the present, and I forget the past, stop worrying about the future.
In my back garden buttermilk coloured brimstone butterflies and orange and black commas have been flitting through most days. Numerous different species of bee have been testing my identification skills. My girlfriend’s infinitely better natural ability at identifying them puts me to shame.
We’ve started putting the moth trap out in the garden in recent weeks – a trap that lets you catch moths overnight using a light, identify them in the morning, and release them again safe and sound. In the UK we have around 60 species of butterfly, and 2500 species of moths. Only two of them eat clothes. Many are small and brown. Some are huge, and some are purple and green, some delicate oranges, some red and black. With names such as lunar yellow underwing and hebrew character the realm of moths is, to me, a hidden and never ending world of poetry waiting to be discovered. The shift from cold nights with an empty trap to warm ones when you start to get those first few moths marks the transition from Winter to Spring.
As I walk to work in the morning my ears are adjusting to the dawn chorus. After nine months off, recognising the various, often overlapping, songs is like learning to ride a bike again. The repetitious song thrush is obvious, as is the appropriately named chiffchaff. Distinguishing blackcap from garden warbler is always the toughest challenge, but a satisfying one when you’re sure you’ve got it right. In a few weeks I’m leading a guided birdsong walk so I need to make sure I’m back in shape to teach others.
Out of balance?
Climate change seems to be a theme to which I keep returning in these posts. Many of the creatures, migrants and native, that Spring’s return heralds could be seriously affected by climate change.
Having spent a year living in the jungle and seeing the impacts of climate change there, my mind is repeatedly drawn to the decline of wildlife in our own countryside and to what the future might hold. I’m feeling particularly wistful – maybe I’m getting old.
But it’s important to think that when people my age (I’m 28) are retired, or our children, might not be able to hear the same birds, see the same flowers as I am this Spring. Climate change can feel intractable and too big to handle. But the wildlife on our doorsteps and the threats it faces form the best lens through which to understand this complex challenge.
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Photo: Matt Adam Williams