Simon Barnes Author and Journalist

Sports and Wild Blog

Simon Barnes

The piper at the gates of dawn

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I was always a little annoyed that Pink Floyd stole the title for their first album from The Wind in the Willows when it was released back in 1967. They were never my band, even though Astronomy Domine and Interstellar Overdrive were tracks that could make a chap’s head spin. My heart was always with Ratty… and also with Roly, Otter’s youngest, who encountered the god Pan at daybreak as the book took a weird mystical sidestep from the main narrative about Toad. This happens, of course, in the chapter that shares its title with the album.

So I got up at the piper’s hour on Saturday morning to make my annual pilgrimage in Time. I stepped from the house at five to four, fully dressed for winter, carrying a flask of Rooibos tea and my binoculars. Why is it always easier in practice than in theory? I had already put this jaunt off half a dozen times since May began.

But there I was in the cool grey world, blackbirds already singing hard, a Cetti’s warbler belting out his shouty song from the middle of our scrap of marsh, three sedge warblers very clearly telling each other in song who belongs where.

There was a sudden ferocious din: a modern Broadlands sound that seems to come from centuries back when the Broads were new. It’s the wild, crazy barking of Chinese water deer, exotics, imports, intruders: but they seem as appropriate to the place as any of the creatures that have been here since time and marshland began.

High hopes and low expectations. Always the right motto when you set out to look for wildlife. For there was one creature I really wanted to see and I knew my chances were slight. I’d been concerned they were not longer about so much, because the lack of rain and dike-clearing operations had caused the water-levels to fall.

I sat there sipping tea, occasionally raising the binoculars as a little colour crept into the world. A pair of barn owls hunted just the far side of the dike that marks my boundary: on one occasion one of them passed three feet over my head. Willow warbler, cuckoo.

And then, like a present, like a reward for all my quiet sitting, a quiet miracle took place. I could hear water moving in the dyke that lay three feet from my nearest boot. Not in a splashy moorhen way, this was smooth and gradual. A browny-black shape in silvery-black water: wet fur, urgent business, good speed.

Yes, here was Otter. Or maybe it was Roly, grownup but forever marked by the great encounter of his cubhood. Passing me by as I waited at the gates of dawn. Living his life at the end of the day that few humans visit: yet it’s a strange fact that almost all humans, whether they see them or not, thrill at the mere knowledge that there are otters about, and in greater numbers than they were half-a-century back.

Otters are a conservation success story: and that’s a rare enough thing, worth getting excited about, a barrier against despair. We can get it right at times. When we want to.

The bow-wave died down, the waters levelled and stilled. A whitethroat joined in the chorus, at first hesitatingly, and then with full May-morning confidence. Day was now a fact. The world had once again miraculously passed through the gates of dawn. And I’d celebrated with Roly.

I’d finished all the tea. Time to get back to reality. Or rather, to leave it behind and get back to the main narrative. Enriched, immeasurably enriched by this diversion.

 

Comments

  3. On holiday, one year, in Cornwall my dog was ill in the middle of the night so I took her out along the coastal path. We didn’t go far and I sat on a rock while Folly snuffled about. Either her movements or mine caught the attentions of a barn owl and its curiosity brought it to within a few feet of my head. It swooped around several times but obviously we were too large a prey to bother with. It was a magical encounter with the wild world, farmland juxtaposed with the Atlantic Ocean and the two of us part and parcel of it all.

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  4. So worthwhile getting up at the crack of dawn when you experience seeing an otter. Is it always the blackbird, do you think, that starts off the dawn chorus?

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  6. Thanks again, Simon. Pictures in my head. We even have them in Jesmond Dene in the heart of my city and Wind in the Willows is one of my favourite books which I still revisit at times. Childhood memories invoked but we didn’t have otters anywhere near us then. Foxes and otters in the city ! maybe we could introduce hen harriers onto our Town Moor !!

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  7. Lovely to hear from you again,hope you will be back in the EDP too. Enjoyed your talk at Cley the other day.

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    • I’m still doing the EDP every fortnight, glad you enjoyed the talk. I’m doing something at Birdscapes gallery in July for World Land Trust; it would be nice if you could come along.

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  8. In my early 20’s (some 45 years ago) I lived and worked in Hereford but was horrified when I discovered one of my husband’s colleagues enjoyed otter hunting, all dressed up like a foxhunter but not quite the same “uniform” (wellies or waders maybe – forgotten now). It sent shivers down my spine then, thank goodness we’re more enlightened now. Great article, Simon, I was with you all the way.

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  9. A lovely email…..leaving reality behind indeed. I’ve been putting my dawn walk off for a while myself. Scandalous! especially at this time of year.
    My highlights this week at about 7.30 am?….a Green Woodpecker (which I could hear and initially thought must have been the local Goshawk terrorising the vicinity lately – schoolboy error, but I’m a ‘bad birdwatcher’) and a number of Tree Pipits! I was absolutely delighted – I remember you coming to Wales to see a Dipper and saw one and you were a happy chap. The Tree Pipit was a a revelation for me, doing what the Meadow Pipits do but from the top of a tree, and only passing through for the summer? Wonderful.
    Floyd overated by the way Simon, and shocking plageriarizers!
    Now Yes on the other hand – Perpetual Change 1970, Survival 1968. Even Jon Anderson had his feet on the ground once upon a time.

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