Wild Hares and Hummingbirds (11 page)

Not that this bird intends to hang around. Its long, slender wings power it onwards, as they have for the past five thousand miles, and will do for many more. It passes low over the field by Perry Farm, before rising up into the sky to clear the farm buildings, as it heads towards the parish boundary. Within minutes it has left us far behind, crossing rural Somerset, over the Cotswold Hills, and on towards the north.

Years ago, I stood on the volcanic island of Surtsey, off the south coast of Iceland, an island so new that it didn’t even exist when I was born. As I tried to come to terms with this disconcerting notion, I saw a swallow hawking for insects under sunny blue skies. It was a true pioneer – swallows do not even nest in Iceland – pushing the boundaries of its range to seek out new places to live and breed.

Over the years I have watched swallows crossing the Sahara Desert in Morocco, and the Negev Desert in Israel; alongside big game in the Masai Mara and Okavango Delta; at Cape May in New Jersey, and Punta Tombo in Patagonia. In all these far-flung places I have experienced the same sense of wonder. How can this tiny bird, weighing barely half an ounce, cross the world’s continents with such ease?

That same wonder grips me today, long after the swallow has flown out of sight; and I await with delicious anticipation the return of ‘our’ swallows, currently somewhere to the south. One day, during the next week or two, I shall hear that familiar twitter, as they swoop down to land on the telegraph wires beside our home.

Later that day, as I collect the Sunday papers from the village stores, I mention my swallow; and am told that Mrs Puddy has beaten me to it, having seen her first swallow here on the first day of the month.

A
T QUARTER PAST
six – after dawn, but before the sun has risen above the horizon – the yaffling call of a green woodpecker echoes across a landscape draped in mist. The distant Mendips are only just visible, and a thin veil of grey covers the sky, as a shapely half-moon struggles to break through.

Rabbits skitter across the dew-drenched village lawns, while wood pigeons, disturbed by my passing, launch themselves into the cool, thin air. Like an overweight diver rashly attempting a leap from the high board, one plummets headlong towards the earth, yet just manages to avoid crashing, rising back into the air with a noisy clatter of wings.

As the moon climbs in the strengthening blue sky, a hidden blackcap is in full voice, its fluty song rippling out
across
the landscape to signal its return. I often wonder, if we heard the blackcap’s song more regularly, whether we might rate it even higher than the usual leaders in the hit parade of British birdsongs, the blackbird and song thrush.

Meanwhile, in the centre of the village, as early-morning commuters stop off to pick up their daily newspapers, the telegraph wires hum expectantly. Throughout the winter they have borne the weight of jackdaws, starlings and collared doves – hefty birds all, causing the wires to bow heavily.

Today, a smaller, lighter burden will finally make landfall. Since that first sighting a few days ago, I have seen several swallows in the skies over the village; birds passing through on their way further north. But this morning, as I cycle beneath the wire that crosses the road between the Pack Horse Inn and Avery’s Garage, I notice a small, slender bundle of feathers perched there. The first of our own swallows is back.

This bird may be alone today, but within a week others will arrive, and soon settle down to breed. All over the British countryside, from Scilly to Shetland, swallows are returning to their ancestral homes: for not only do these little birds perform the miracle of travelling all the way to Africa and back, they also manage to navigate to the very place where they were born. Such skills are almost beyond our powers of imagination, though not beyond our ability to wonder.

But these birds’ stay with us is all too brief. Much sooner than we imagine, in late August and early September, they and their offspring will gather again on these same wires, this time chattering rather than silent, as if discussing the best route to take on their journey south. Then, at some unseen signal, they will head off on that epic journey: across Europe, the Mediterranean and the Sahara Desert, over the tropic of Cancer, the equator, and the tropic of Capricorn, all the way to southern Africa. But for the moment, this solitary bird perches discreetly on the telegraph wire, ignored by busy passers-by on their way to work.

E
ACH DAY NOW
, in woods, hedgerows and gardens throughout the parish, and right across Britain, one of the most extraordinary natural phenomena in the world is occurring. The dawn chorus is in full swing. Yet because it reaches its peak around daybreak, most of us are too lazy to get out of our beds to witness it.

Here in the Somerset countryside, the earliest bird is not usually the blackbird, as in more wooded parts of Britain, but the rook. Shortly before the sun begins to glow in the eastern sky, their harsh croaks can be heard from the tops of the tall ash trees dotted around the village centre. Soon afterwards, the rooks are joined by the soft, repetitive cooing of wood pigeons, and then by the first
true
songbirds: the delicate, plaintive lilt of the robin, and the stronger, deeper tones of the blackbird.

The traditional harbinger of daybreak, the cockerel, often wakes up later than his wild relatives. He is sometimes beaten to it by the peacocks kept by one of our neighbours, whose haunting cries pierce the cool morning air, lending an oddly exotic ambience to this very English scene.

Half an hour after the chorus begins, it accelerates, both in variety and volume. Other resident species – dunnock, wren and song thrush – start up, swiftly followed by great tits and blue tits. The first migrant to sing is, appropriately, the earliest to arrive, the chiffchaff; soon followed by the sweeter tones of the blackcap. Half an hour after sunrise, almost all the local birds have joined in, creating a wall of sound from which it can often be difficult to pick out individual species, let alone a particular songster. Finally, the finches bring up the rear, along with the distant, laughing call of a green woodpecker.

At this stage I stop bothering to try to identify every bird, and instead am content to let the chorus flow over me, like a wave surging up a beach. Hearing the whole orchestra in full flow, it is easy to forget the true purpose of this springtime phenomenon. The birds are neither trying to entertain us, nor to compete with the other species singing around them. Instead they are singing for two very specific biological reasons: to attract a mate, and to repel rival males, of the same species. So although we hear up to
twenty
different songs, the birds only listen to their own kind, in a kind of avian audio apartheid.

As I stand and listen, though, I can’t help but ignore this, and simply revel in the privilege of being able to witness one of the greatest natural wonders in the world. What is so extraordinary is that it takes place all over Britain, from the most far-flung islands to the heart of our cities. And yet by the time we 60 million Britons have stirred from our beds, the show’s over.

D
URING THIS SEASON
, and indeed at most other times of year, the vast majority of our encounters with wildlife are with birds. And yet there are probably as many mammals as birds in the British countryside. But because so many of them are nocturnal, or simply very good at keeping hidden, we hardly ever see them. When we do, the meeting between us is often so brief that we rarely get any real sense of their lives.

Take the field vole. This is not simply the commonest mammal in Britain; it is also, with upwards of 75 million individuals, the only one to outnumber the human population of these islands.

To have a chance of finding a field vole at all, we need to resort to the rather underhand method of catching them. Fortunately Alison, a stalwart of the Mammal Society, lives along the Yarrow Road less than a fifteen-minute
walk
from my home. She has kindly agreed to bring along her collection of traps, hopefully to reveal the secrets of those mysterious creatures known as ‘small mammals’, including mice and shrews as well as voles.

One fine April evening Alison and her nine-year-old twins Lewis and Harriet pay us a visit, to set the traps. The mechanism is wonderfully simple: once the creature has run along the narrow tunnel, lured by the presence of seeds (for voles and mice) and blowfly larvae (for the insectivorous shrews), a trap door shuts behind it, so it cannot escape. Inside, it is more like a hotel than a cage: packed with straw for them to keep warm, and plenty of food, as these tiny creatures must eat almost constantly, devouring their body weight every single day, or they will die.

We spend an entertaining half-hour placing the traps in suitable locations where a small mammal might stumble across them, gaining scratched hands from the many brambles around the edges of our garden in the process. Alison warns us that we might return the next day to find all seventeen traps empty – the process is very hit and miss. But for me, that’s all part of the fun.

Bright and early the following morning we are up, dressed and ready for our mammal encounters. The children are suitably excited, and I worry about how soon they might get bored if we have no luck. But of the first three traps we check, two of the doors are shut, a good sign; although rain, slugs and bad luck can all cause the door to close without a mammal inside.

Alison tips up the trap and empties what appears to be an entire haystack into a large polythene bag. There are animal droppings, then chopped pieces of grass … then, finally, a small, round, furry creature falls unceremoniously into the bottom of the bag. It is definitely a vole, but which one? Bank voles are a possibility – Alison often catches these in her own garden – but they have a more russet tinge to their plumage than this little beastie. Then we see the tail; or, at least, what there is of it: a short, stumpy protuberance, only an inch or so long. This, together with the greyish-brown fur, confirms that this is indeed a field vole.

After all the children have taken a good look at the animal, Charlie is chosen to release it. As soon as the vole lands on the ground it disappears into the long grass, melting away, before surfacing again a foot or so further along; then with two or three short, jerky hops, it is gone.

We also strike lucky with the next trap: another field vole, swiftly followed by a third. And at the bottom of the garden, two more rodents: smaller and more slender, white below and yellowish-brown above, with long, oval-shaped ears. These are wood mice: the quintessential wild mouse of our countryside.

When released they dash away even more quickly than the voles, this time on the surface of the grass rather than burrowing underneath. The second mouse entertains the children by momentarily dancing across their wellington boots; a second later it has also disappeared.

Over a cooked breakfast, the children chatter excitedly about their experience. They, and we, will never look at our back garden in quite the same way again.