The bells, the bells

Saturday June 6

It was one of those evening that you think will never end, the sky never darken, the temperature never fall. So we – Eddie, Cindy, me – sat on a bench with the river in front of us and watched fluff.

The weekend pleasure boats were all parked up in front of us. A man walked past with two little dogs wearing life jackets. These had handles on them so you could fish them out of the river with your boat-hook. “They glow in the dark, too,” we were told.

Across the river, above the flood-plain a marsh harrier, male, made one of those long imperturbable glides, a confident shallow-angled descent into the reeds. And all around the fluff. The air was filled with the seeds from the willow trees, turning the air white in a warm and living snow-storm.

There is something incomparably benign about this: the unhurried confident processes of life: plenty of time and plenty of seeds to spare. And perhaps one of these seeds would one day be a 22nd century seed-spilling giants like the ones that line the river: and perhaps not. No matter. Something would grow and willow-kind would survive and proper.

So it seemed, anyway, as we sat there knowing that the longest evening of all would with us in a fortnight. The laden, fluff-filled air above the river seemed like another opportunity for the great haiku-writer I never will be. And then, to show that some places never know when to stop, the bell-ringers began their Saturday evening practice, and the air was filled with the joyous clamour along with the drifting life of the seedy fluff.

30 days wild 6

Taking up an interesting hobby

Sunday June 7

Another of those instantaneous dramas. I was in the middle of the eternal horsey chores when my eyes were drawn upward. That’s one of

the things about being a birder: your eyes get into the habit of being drawn upwards. We are all of us in the gutter but some of us are looking at the birds.

It was a giant swift – and every birder reading these words knows what’s coming next. My old friend Chris once rang me up to tell me had seen “a giant swift” and could I please tell him what it really was. And it was for once easy: a no-brainer, in short. For this is the classic description of a hobby.

Hobbies are the falcons of summer. They feed on the protein of our summer skies: dragonflies, swallows, martins and yes, even swifts are not too swift for them. Their long, slim wings make a silhouette of supreme elegance: but they are also fast, manoeuvrable and ferocious.

Here’s a rule: if you think it might be a hobby, it’s always a kestrel. But when you know it’s a hobby you’re always right. I think here’s some kind of moral point hidden in there, if only I could dig it out.

In the afternoon, Cindy, Eddie and I visited the gardens of Ditchingham Hall. Gardens are strange half-places where the wild and the tame are tangled inextricably together: an expression both of non-human wildness and human passion. For some, beauty needs order.

The bumblebees swarmed over a bed of Nepeta: as many furry bee-bums as there were purple flowerheads. Cindy resolved to plant a bed of the stuff back at our place.

30 days Wild 7th June